Shad Gaspard Comments on WWE Release and Going MMA

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7xWrestling Show interview with Shad Gaspard:

When asked about what lead to his WWE release back in November…
“My reason was pretty simple. I kind of knew it was coming anyways. I’ve been with the company for about eight years so I’ve seen the ins and outs and I’ve already seen the business side of the company as well as the wrestling side. One key thing about wrestling is that you can’t make it on your own. You have to have supporters, you have to have people backing you, and people wanting to see you succeed. At the same time, you’ll always have people wanting to see you fail but you just hope that you have more people wanting to see you succeed than fail. And you try to make the right connections with friends so that you can reach your goal of being a success in wrestling. One of the things that happened with me was that a lot of people thought that I was set to be champion, that I had the look, the size the verbal ability and the physical ability to do well but at the same time, there were others who felt that I just didn’t have what it takes to be a champion and they felt I was in professional wrestling for other reasons, not pertaining to wrestling. What it came down to was they sent me down to Florida they put me through a lot of trials and tribulations and I pretty much succeeded every last one of them but at the end of the day the people who wanted to deter me, they kind of won.”

On recent rumors of him possibly going to MMA…
“I fought in No-Holds-Barred for several years before I came into the WWE and I loved it with a passion. To this day, I still love mixed martial arts, No-Holds-Barred, with a passion. It’s my extracurricular activity…I didn’t get into it when it became a fad. I was fighting with [No-Holds-Barred] before John McCain made us wear three-ounce gloves; we used to fight bare-handed. It wasn’t called MMA, it was called No-Holds Barred. Currently right now, I have no interest in going back. A couple of friends of mine invited me to their gym to train and fight…Then all of a sudden, there was rumors started going around because a lot of their students saw me fight and were like “s***, this guy is not a wrestler, he’s really good” and some of their students just kind of assumed that I was going to cross-over like Brock did. I’m a big guy, but I’m not a slow guy and I’m not an uncoordinated guy; I’m not an oaf, I’m an athlete. I’ve been boxing since I was five, doing martial arts since I was eight and amateur wrestling since I was ten years old…I have no interest in going back right now. I’m pretty happy with where I’m at but for the right money and right price, who knows what I will do.

On his former partner JTG, and his favorite tag-teams to work with…
“Me and [JTG] have been friends for many years right now, and he’s actually one of my oldest friends and to this day I still love him as a brother. I actually hit him up over the holidays and he’s doing great. We loved working with each other and we still plan on working with each other in another area of our life, later on in the future. We used to love training with the Hart Dynasty; we had a good match with them. Charlie and Shelton—they actually educated us a lot in the ring. With them, it was a lot of on job training to where Charlie didn’t take no s***, neither did Shelton so we had to really step our game up every time. I think one of our favorite tag-teams working with was Ken Dykstra and John Morrison because all four of us are really close friends and we used to have these really good matches to where every time we worked, we brought down the house but the office never saw it go anywhere. So we all liked working with each other because we are all close friends and had a good time.”

Other topics include: His upcoming graphic novel, his acting career, whether he is interested in TNA, and more.

Full Interview: http://7xwrestlingshow.com/interview_with_shad_gaspard.html.

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.