Page 41 - Muscle & Fitness (December 2019)
P. 41
By Anthony O’Reilly
put his fists in the air and go were really pumped. I remem-
“Joey Matthews! Joey Mat- ber I had done “Adam Cole
thews!” And I always thought Bay-Bay” then, and then every-
Chris Jericho’s, “Come on, one did it with me, loudly. At
baby!” was hilarious. So I kind that moment, I was like, “OK,
of combined the two. But for people have kind of latched
the first six or seven years, on to this.”
no one would yell it with me.
Then I remember coming back Your character’s a bit obnox-
[from an injury] as a surprise, ious. Are you like that at all
and it being kind of a big, in real life?
exciting deal, and the fans When I developed this wres-
tling character, I wanted him
to be as obnoxious and arro-
gant and pompous as humanly
possible. But part of the reason
that’s so fun for me is that’s not
really who I am. I’m pretty shy,
I’m fairly reserved. I try to be
friendly to everybody. I get all
of my frustration and anger
and arrogance out when I’m in
the ring for 20 minutes.
How do you stay in shape
with such a grueling
schedule?
Yoga has helped me tremen-
dously. It’s something that
I didn’t really institute until
after I got my shoulder sur-
gery [in 2014]. And then after
that, my body just felt so much
better. Yoga really refreshes
you and makes you feel a lot
better. A lot more awake, a lot
more limber. It’s a great on-the-
road exercise to do.
Any weird on-the-road super-
stitions that you adhere to?
This isn’t the case anymore,
but I used to wrestle all the
time with the exact same
socks on. I had these long tube
socks that I wore, and they
were my lucky socks that I
had to wear all the time. Now
I’m wrestling way too often to
C O U RT E S Y O F W W E have the same pair of socks,
but before, when I was wres-
tling once a week, if I didn’t
have my lucky socks with me,
it was going to be a bad night.
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