Moose is proud to be a professional wrestler that used to be a football player, not a football player that became a pro wrestler.
IMPACT World Champion Moose recently spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard about making the jump to pro wrestling after he played in the NFL. Moose (Quinn Ojinnaka) says that he thought it was a dig to not be considered as a wrestler first, then shared some of the advice he might share with other athletes looking to make the jump to the ring.
“Yeah, I’m prideful about that because I feel disrespected when people say ‘he’s an ex-football player who’s now wrestling.’ I just feel like that’s a bad — it’s kinda being labeled as not being good enough. So I kinda wanted to be like, ‘Oh he’s a professional wrestler who once was a football player.’ I think that’s more what I’m looking for and I think I’ve switched that stigma because you usually generally don’t get a lot of football guys that come in and accomplish some of the stuff that I’ve done or is good as I am,” Moose said, “And that takes hard work. That takes dedication, that takes working on your craft daily, watching a lot of film. I’ve done the work, and now I’m getting those praises or the rewards, you could say. The advice I would give to some of the guys who are trying to do what I’ve done is just be patient and put in the work and like I know you guys can and I mean hopefully the same thing happens to you guys.”
The way collegiate athletes are treated has changed in the past several years with the introduction of the new Name, Image and Likeness policies, but more recently, it changed how WWE is looking to recruit athletes. WWE introduced its “Next In Line” program in December, giving amateur athletes a more direct road to sports entertainment. Asked if he thinks something like that could have helped him when he first broke into wrestling, Moose admitted he didn’t know too much about the new initiative, but said it all comes down to passion.
“I don’t know that that thing with WWE is gonna work because I’m a firm believer that to be good in wrestling, the first thing you have to have is passion for wrestling. I haven’t heard anything about [WWE’s Next In Line program]. I don’t follow much what other companies do, but to answer your question, I don’t know if any of the guys who they just picked up are wrestling fans,” Moose stated.
“Because if they’re not wrestling fans, then you get into the same problem that I’m talking about where once the hard work kicks in, if you’re not a wrestling fan, you’re not gonna wanna stick around. It’s one of those things, I’ve been a wrestling fan since I was eight or ten years old, so once the hard work started, I knew this was something I wanted to do because I fell in love with wrestling at a young age. Now with these guys that they just signed, are they in love with wrestling? Are they fans of wrestling? Only they would know the answer to that.”
Moose defends his title against Matt Cardona and W. Morrissey at Hard To Kill on Saturday, January 8 in Dallas, Texas. Check out our full interview with Moose at the top of this post. You can also check out the full list of WWE’s inaugural NIL signees at this link.
Read More: Triple H Calls WWE’s New NIL Program An ‘Amazing Recruiting Tool’
