Da Pope might be eyeing more gold, but he certainly has a heart made of one as well.
Pope recently spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard about his NWA Television Championship win and spoke about how the landscape of the National Wrestling Alliance has changed this year. Despite losing a potential opponent in Eddie Kingston since he went to All Elite Wrestling, Pope says he’s still got his eye on the company’s top prize.
“I was certainly really digging me and Eddie Kingston, and that’s was gonna lead to something as well. But I was certainly digging that. Now that Eddie Kingston is no longer with us, I certainly aim for Nick Aldis, and I’d certainly love to have a go around with him. Unfortunately, I think myself and Nick would be more better fit for it to be in front of a live audience. But I certainly look forward to jousting with him, I look forward to getting into the ring and going after the ‘Ten Pounds Of Gold’. Now that I got my taste of gold, I’m looking for more. Outside of Nick, we got a lot of great talented guys in the NWA, associated with the NWA, but Nick is certainly one of them that’s at the top, if not the top.”
Pope is working on the latest chapter of his in-ring career, but he also stays busy outside of the ring by running The Love-Alive Charity in the Jacksonville area. He created the charity nearly nine years ago and explained how they work with their community to try and enrich people’s lives.
“What we do here in Jacksonville, Florida and the surrounding counties that are in Jacksonville, we try to take care and provide for those in disadvantaged communities, and that’s basically what we’ve been about. Whether that’s the homeless whether that’s the women in battered shelters, whether that’s disadvantaged communities, whether it’s the kids going to school that are living in poverty—we try to go around and we try to enhance their living environment, their experience and whatnot. For those who are on the streets, we provide blankets to them, we provide hygiene products and even for those who are not, whether it’s the women standing out there in line—we see hundreds and hundreds. Right now, we have fed over 8-9 thousand and our next event is coming up on January 9, 2021 and I’m making a push now to try and get all involved who are willing to do so because my charity is a public-funded charity. We work off the donations of people like you who are willing to say here’s a couple of bucks. ‘Here’s ten dollars that I spend on the regular’ without even thinking about it. So that’s what we do and what I really love is that we operate and serve the community straight out of Burger King. So we don’t feed them no peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—of course, they’d be grateful for that—but my idea when I started this back in 2011, 2012, was to give back to them the things that we often take for granted.”
If anyone would like to learn more about the charity and their mission, or make a donation, visit love-alive.org.
