Ilja Dragunov reflects on the origin of his love of wrestling.
Ilja Dragunov is one of the most passionate wrestlers in WWE, and now, he is reflecting on the beginnings of his love of wrestling.
Appearing on the Out of Character podcast with Ryan Satin, Dragunov revealed that he actually wasn’t a fan of wrestling as he was growing up but he became passionate about the sport when he started doing backyard wrestling in the early 2010s.
“Wrestling came very unexpectedly into my life because I was not, compared to a lot of people, a fan since my childhood. Everything basically started with backyard stuff somewhere close to my hometown.
“When I started all of that there was no real role scene in Germany,” he continued. “It was kind of developing, it was kind of growing and getting more and more and more into that, because Germany is known more for different kinds of sports. Like, football is the biggest thing there, as we all know, but like wrestling was still kind of like developing.”
Continuing on, Dragunov said that shortly after he began his backyard career a proper school opened up, and that’s when things truly began for him.
“I started the backyard stuff, then somehow came up that a [German pro] opened up a wrestling school in Dresden, my hometown, and this was the time when we really started to have a real professional training from a real pro in Germany. There, I did most part of my background education before I went to have my first professional wrestling match.”
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