All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and “GLOW” star Awesome Kong was recently interviewed by The New York Times to promote the Netflix program. Kong discussed why wrestling is so addicting and explained how “GLOW” captures the difficulty of working on the road in professional wrestling.
Here are the highlights:
Despite the danger, people keep wrestling. What’s so addicting about it?
I think there’s nothing like performing in front of a live audience. That sense of approval and validation has a lot to do with why people don’t quit. They stay and just need to hear that validation one more time.
This season also touches on the idea of isolation and how people who travel for work handle being away from home so much. What went into portraying the odd life of a pro wrestler on the road?
When Yolanda goes to try to get her hair done and it turns into an adventure to find a hair salon, that was so relatable. I wrestled in Japan for six years and felt extremely isolated, because the country was not my own, the language was not my own, the food was not my own. I hardly saw people that looked like me. It was extremely isolating. Of course I adapted, but it got to the point where I was talking to myself in 7-Elevens. [Laughs.]
I’m dead serious — I was having full-on conversations with myself in 7-Eleven. Once I was doing it and I had to stop talking because the guy next to me wanted to know what happened next, and I was like, “What …?” and he recited to me exactly what I had been saying and I was like, “O.K., it’s time for me to get out of here.” The isolation makes you go cuckoo. It can atrophy your brain and make you manifest all kinds of abnormal emotional feelings and behavior.
Also Read: Awesome Kong Discusses Acting Leading to Wrestling Success, GLOW Character Arc