Corey Graves was this week’s guest on the Chasing Glory podcast with Lilian Garcia where he opened up on his upbringing and life in professional wrestling. Graves talked about growing up as a fan of wrestling, and deciding he wanted to be a wrestler after a normal teenage life crisis led his father told him to be more creative with his time:
“I grew up a fan. My dad grew up watching Bruno Sammartino. As long as I can remember, we watched wrestling together.
When I was 14 years old, I had the normal crisis decided what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I decided the solution to all my woes was to get my tongue pierced. I told my dad that this is what I had to do to be happy. He looked at me like I was ridiculous and told me to do something creative with my time. Go be a bodybuilder, go learn to box, go learn to wrestle. He was just throwing stuff against the wall, and he was shocked when I said I wanted to wrestle.
My dad was a fire chief, so he had connections to a local promoter for when they did charity events. They bent the rules a bit and started training me when I was 15. I trained in the back of a store at an abandoned shopping mall with no A/C or heating or anything. Training in 30-degree weather with no heat in Pittsburgh isn’t fun, but I did it.”
Graves talked about staying with wrestling after all of these years, saying he’s taken a different approach as both a bad guy and a commentator, saying he gets to enjoy everything about his role without being the sole focus of things. Graves also noted that he’s admittedly more reserved than people would think, adding that he’s not trying to be a jerk like some people might think:
“As a wrestler, I’ve always enjoyed the instant gratification of being a heel, a bad guy. A lot of guys get off on the crowd chanting their name. What always really gratified me was being the bad guy, being beaten, and then laying down and taking it in, whether it’s in front of 50 people or a bigger WWE crowd. If you win, you have to celebrate or mug for the cameras, but if you’re laid out, you exhale and you’re done.
Weirdly enough, I’m a little bit shy in person. Most people take that to mean that I’m a jerk, but I’m just not naturally an outgoing person. That translates to how I felt in the ring, and it also applies to what I do on commentary. I’m not the focus of anything, it’s my voice, I’m telling the stories, but it’s not about me. So I feel safer, I get to be a part of it but there aren’t eyes on me.”
Graves spoke about being compared to CM Punk, saying they don’t speak much these days, but he’s always taken that comparison as a bit of a compliment, as they were close at one time and he learned a lot from the former WWE Champion:
“I get that a lot. Up until very recently, we were very close friends. He held my first born kid before I did because I was in Spain. I learned a lot from him, but different career paths were taken, different choices were made. I don’t speak much to him anymore. I never take the comparison as an insult, because Punk taught me a lot throughout my career.”
Related: Corey Graves On Learning He Couldn’t Wrestle Anymore, Finding A Balance In Being Famous
Listen to “Corey Graves – Turning Shattered Dreams Into Opportunity” on Spreaker.
