EC3 is over, man.
WrestleZone recently spoke with EC3, who will challenge Cyon for the NWA National Championship at NWA’s 312 pay-per-view. EC3 spoke about how his “Essential Character” rallied against nostalgia, something the NWA is ripe with. Now, he continues the evolution of his on-air persona and says his goals in wrestling are the same, and the next step starts with beating Cyon.
“The constant evolution of a character and your reality and personas all tie in. The Essential Character, through the gloomy dark times were the prime of my career and my dream job was taken away due to a pandemic. If you think about it, for any of us as talent, years of our prime years were kind of taken from us. [We were] relegated to empty arena wrestling and lack of travel and lack of opportunities to, in theory, make more money because the more you work, the more money you make,” he explained. “That was suitable for what The Essential Character was and what I was trying to create with Control Your Narrative, which was never to be a promotion but more so an idea, a mindset, perhaps even a faction, which is kind where it’s going.”
EC3 says that he doesn’t want to constantly live in and revisit nostalgia, but he does believe there’s a way to respect it while moving forward.
“Taking that back, scaling it back, NWA, Nostalgia Wrestling Alliance. Through the great history of the past, I think we can together build a future. That’s kind of what I’m doing,” he explained, “as I move on towards passing on knowledge and things like that, where I’m trying to, I’ve talked about writing a book as a guide for wrestling the ways I see it. What was old worked for these reasons. What builds a foundation, it’s the same thing with civilization, what built the foundations work for these reasons. But where we’re going, we can still do the things we wanna do, the evolutions we wanna take, if we just do them with integrity towards the past.”
”There’s fans still dream-booking Sting versus Undertaker. Dudes, it’s never gonna happen. But who’s the next Sting, and who’s the next Undertaker? There are none because we’ve only relegated ourselves to thinking about what’s worked in the past, as opposed to being open-minded with what is coming in the future,” he said. “I think as talents, we have done the same thing, where we’ve relegated ourselves to, ‘We’ll never be these guys, but we’ll be alright.’ The lack of drive to topple those great legacies and those great names by creating ourselves. That’s what’s lacking.”
Asked if he knows what the next step in his evolution is, EC3 says he has a vision for it.
”I’ve been the Top 1%. I’ve been ‘Chicks In America.’ I’ve been the Essential Character. I’ve been world champion. And I’ve been a huge jabroni, so like, I’ve been everything. What is that final form and I’m kind of teasing it with NWA, and it’s the ‘Over Man’, you know, because I’m over, man. But if you read philosophy and Nietzsche and the story of the Übermensch and how that’s influenced so many different heroes of fiction and things of that nature, directly stealing from him and making it my own within wrestling. So that is the final form I want to achieve.
“I don’t think I can achieve that until my pec is fully healed and my third world championship is around my waist and my tattoos are complete and my art is solidified. But there will be a moment where I ascend into hypothetically the heavens, but it’s probably going to be an arena, so maybe just up into the rafters and I become that over man that I really desperately truly want to become that’s it.”
Bringing things back around to NWA 312, EC3 has a plan, and that plan can move forward by beating Cyon at NWA 312.
”Cyon is the NWA National Champion. Titles, accolades, I have visions, I have goals. They mean a lot. They mean more money. You make more money, the more you win. Résumé’s built. Pride, respect, all that, yes. But I look at the NWA National Title, winning it, that’s a stepping stone because my vision, my goal, and my whole demeanor is based on one number, the number’s three, and I’m currently sitting at two world heavyweight championships under my belt. I think a final caveat would be the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship, so to get there, I have to go through Cyon, I have to go through Austin Idol. I have to go through the past to get what I want and take it to the future. Boom, promo. Sold. See you there.”
NWA 312 takes place on Friday, April 7 and it airs on FITE. Check out the full interview with EC3 below:
