Danny Limelight says Aron Stevens gave him the right advice and confidence to be true to himself in the professional wrestling world.
Danny Limelight (now known as Danny Rivera in MLW) spoke with Jon Alba for the One on One series on AdFreeShows and spoke about how he portrays himself as a performer. Limelight says he wasn’t sure who he should be, noting that there was some confusion as to what he should pull from but Aron Stevens (Damien Sandow) pushed him to do it all and just be himself.
“I was mixing wanting to be Danny Limelight. I was mixing being a father. I was mixing being a Marine, then trying to be Danny Rivera on TV. So it was just a lot for me to handle at the time. Then in 2020, Aron Stevens, formerly known as Damien Sandow, he kind of sat me down and was like, ‘you can do all this shit. You can do all the things, you can fly, you can grapple, you know, you’ve got all of that. This is what’s going to take you to the next level.’ He’s like, ‘you can be Danny Limelight, but we want you to be this Puerto Rican street kid, from New York, from your upbringing. Just go back to your roots’ is the word he said. ‘Go back to your roots.’ And I said ‘huh, I remember my roots.’ I never forget where I came from. So I was like, ‘alright, I’ll do this.’ And I think that’s when I made that decision to just be Danny Limelight, who I am, Puerto Rican kid from New York City, that’s when I started having the better matches of my career.”
Rivera also talked about how his movie and military background molded him into who he is as a wrestler, explaining that it made him a more well-rounded performer.
“I tell people the two best characteristics I have in wrestling is that I can wrestle any style with anybody. And I can talk on the microphone and sell a match. And I think that comes from the performance side of things that I learned in acting school, things that I learned in the military, and being able to be a motivational speaker. So all that stuff, it comes hand in hand and it all has benefitted my career so far.”
Rivera signed a multi-year deal with MLW in September. His interview with Jon Alba is available now on AdFreeShows and on the AFS YouTube channel.
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