Impact Wrestling star Eddie Edwards recently spoke with Wrestlezone’s Kevin Kellam; you can read a few transcribed highlights and listen to the full interview below.
Edwards recently released a new children’s book with Mark Poulton called ‘Anything Is Possible’ and it is available now through Amazon and Barnes & Noble:
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
Eddie Edwards on where his ‘Anything Is Possible’ phrase came from:
I guess it’s somewhat cliche like ‘anything is possible’, it’s one thing to just say it, and I actually lived through it. Anything Is Possible—I actually stole it from Kevin Garnett when he played for the [NBA’s Boston] Celtics when they won the championship [in 2008]. There’s a famous clip of him screaming in the middle of the court, yelling ‘anything is possible!’ and being such a big Celtics fan, that stuck with me.
When I won the Impact World Championship against Bobby Lashley—a match where I was a supreme underdog—that was the first thing that came to mind when they asked me how I felt. It’s also something that I’ve just carried along with me through my career where I just set a goal, try to accomplish it, set a new goal. In wrestling, just like any other business or dream you’re chasing, there’s going to be ups and downs, and wrestling can be very extreme in that matter. The highs are high and the lows are lows, and throughout my career there were times where I thought I’d never win the Impact World title, I never thought I’d win the GHC Heavyweight Championship over in Japan. The fact that I did have that motto in the back of my head that anything is possible—and it’s cliche, but giving 110 per cent—in the end, I am living proof. It’s not a made up story.
It’s something that I was very happy to get out there. I have nieces and nephews; it means something to me to go out there and prove that that can happen.
Edwards comments on his new direction with IMPACT Wrestling:
It’s been some of the funnest times of my career because like you said, I’ve always been this good guy, I just go out there and wrestle, and all the ‘good guy’ stuff. Now I get to go out there and do something that I’ve never done. I put myself in an uncomfortable position to try and get comfortable to try and see what does work and what doesn’t work. It’s really been a fun and creative time for me; it’s just a complete 180 of what I’ve done and it’s fun to go out there and think of different things and come up with different ideas that any other character, or gimmick or person wouldn’t be able to go out there and do. Because I’m someone that’s slightly off-kilter, I can go out there and get away with it because I’m the ‘crazy’ Eddie Edwards now.
It’s been a lot of fun from changing my wrestling gear completely to promos; I’ve had a good chance to film some different vignettes that are more along that line of a movie feel. There’s a good guy and a bad guy and it leads to the culmination, between me and Sami [Callihan] it was the big fight in the woods. Doing that stuff, it’s been fun, getting to take a step out of my comfort zone and see what we could create.
Eddie on what he’s looking forward to next:
Going forward with my current character and doing this with Moose—Tommy Dreamer was with me last night—but I’m excited to see where [the feud] with myself and Moose goes. How do we end this? What type of craziness or creativeness do we get to get into and see if we can make something good out of it? Other than that, just keep on keeping on and ride that momentum and see what we can create. You never know when you’re going to get hit in the face with a baseball bat and change everything.
How much did baseball bat strike that change everything for him?
I like what it’s turned into. I don’t even know where I would be if it didn’t go down the way it did. As sucky as it was—and scary and crazy at first—once things got to where they were OK health wise, it was like ‘this has been given to us, let’s see what we can create out of it.’ I wouldn’t be having the fun that I’m having, doing this type of creative stuff if we didn’t go down that road.
