Wardlow recently spoke with Mike Johnson of PWInsider and discussed some of his pro wrestling influences, getting into the business, his powerbomb, and more. Below are a few highlights:
What inspired him to get into pro wrestling:
“Man, when I was very, very, very little kid, I’m not even sure if this is something I should remember, my uncle took my oldest sister to a show in Cleveland, a wrestling show, and I was too young to go. And she came back with this photo book of eight by tens with Ultimate Warrior and Macho Man and Hulk Hogan. And I remember looking at these characters like, these are just larger than life, bright, awesome looking characters. And it sparked my interest right away, and then the first time I watched wrestling and saw Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart, it was game over. I fell madly in love and literally just never looked back, but just starting off watching it as a kid, you go through the late eighties, you go through the nineties, you go through the two thousands, all the Attitude Era, the Ruthless Aggression era. You go through it all and you just learn so much from different wrestlers to every generation, and I took a little bit of everybody and created Wardlow with it.”
Going from being a child inspired by pro wrestlers to an adult who gets to inspire young kids when they come across his first AEW action figure:
“I’m happy you said that because that is pretty much the epitome of why I do this. Grew up very, very poor. After eight years old, my father wasn’t in my life much until later. So I looked to pro wrestlers as a father figure or as people to look up to and if I can provide that for just one kid, if one kid can wake up and my action figure sitting on his shelf is what makes him happy or excited for the day or it gets him through his day of school or gets him through his family troubles, or maybe he doesn’t have a father at home and I’m the guy that he looks up to. If I can have one person that thinks that way or I’d make feel that way, this is all worth it and it’s why I do it. So to have my first action figure was one of the coolest feelings in the entire world, still is. Still don’t even know if I believe it, but it’s an incredible feeling.”
Powerbombs that influenced his own:
“This is when life gets wild and you start to think about manifestation and destiny, because two out of the handful of wrestlers that I grew up obsessed with and truly studied and looked up to was A- Kevin Nash, Jackknife powerbomb, and B- Batista, Batista Bomb. I didn’t come into AEW saying, ‘Hey, I want to do a power bomb.’ This is something that organically came about, and it’s just so sweet, too sweet you could say, that I grew up doing so many Jackknife powerbombs and Batista Bombs to my friends on trampolines and now I’m in the middle of an AEW ring just murdering people with power bombs. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Stay tuned for more.
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