Reggie had quite the journey to find himself as part of the WWE roster.
Former WWE 24/7 Champion Reggie recently sat down with Liz Miller of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to discuss a variety of subjects. When speaking about growing up surrounded by gangs, Reggie revealed it was the circus that helped get him out of those bad situations.
“You have to have something to believe in, but ultimately you have to have someone that believes in you,” Reggie said. “And for the longest time, I didn’t have those people to believe in me until I joined circus. It became who I was. It became what I was recognized for around St. Louis, no longer affiliated with anything gang-related. I wasn’t seen as the younger brother of two gang members; I was seen as the guy that does flips. The guy that’s in the circus.”
Reggie believes it was traveling around the world with the circus that helped lead him to eventually becoming a WWE Superstar. Professional wrestling was something that he and his uncle bonded over growing up, but after he was shot and killed Reggie stopped watching for the time being.
“I dove headfirst with circus, and it took me around the world,” Reggie said. “It changed my life. It took me to 10 different countries and ultimately led me to being a WWE Superstar, which is incredible. We would catch ‘Monday Night Raw’ and ‘SmackDown’ on TV, and that was just something that I shared with my uncle.
“We were the only two in our household watching wrestling. And he was very popular in the neighborhood; he was one of the higher drug dealers and one of the famous guys in the neighborhood. And you know, being a wrestling fan, growing up, it wasn’t easy. You got picked on for being a wrestling fan, but I thought that it was cool because one of the coolest guys in our neighborhood was watching wrestling with me, and that was my uncle. And then I stopped watching wrestling once he was shot and killed — every time I watched it, I thought about him. I just stopped watching it.”
Luckily for Reggie, he got back into wrestling and eventually landed his dream job at WWE. It came as a shock to him in the process that everything he learned in the circus translated into learning to be a wrestler.
“I was surprised to see how everything that I had acquired in circus was so easily translatable into wrestling,” Reggie said. “The footwork, the body control, all of those things [were] second nature. So I didn’t have to learn those things; it was just learning psychology, learning the art of wrestling.”
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What do you make of Reggie’s comments? Are you surprised of his journey that led him to WWE? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
