During a recent appearance on the Shining Wizards Wrestling Podcast, the winner of the 2020 Lion’s Break Crown, Clark Connors, shared his opinion on WWE signing Karl Fredericks earlier this month.
Connors, who has worked with Fredericks in NJPW, expressed his admiration for his colleague’s raw talent and wished him well in WWE NXT.
You can read a few highlights from the podcast and listen to the full episode below:
On his response upon hearing that Fredericks had signed a deal with WWE: “It’s awesome. I’m so happy for him. I think I might be more happy for him than he’s happy for himself even. He originally turned down a WWE contract to train with WWE. He was already ready to do that four years ago. Karl is older then me, he’s like 32 right now, 31 or 32, and I’m always like, ‘You gotta make the most of your time, dude. You gotta go there, you gotta make money, and they’re gonna use you and respect,’ because he’s a phenomenal wrestler, but he’s a phenomenal superstar, which is what they look for over there. In my opinion, I think he’s gonna do really great things quickly. Then hopefully he cozies up close with the bosses [so there’s] a spot for me when I’m ready to rock.”
On his background with Fredericks in NJPW: “He was and is the man. It was always nice because when we’re together, we’d take inventory of each other, in terms of, the four of us, Alex, Gabe, myself, Karl, we’re very honest with each other about what we need to fix, what we need to do, who we are as wrestlers. We’ve always said that. Out of the whole group, Karl’s a superstar. He’s the guy you could see having an action figure and on box of Wheaties and sh*t, and that’s his role. So it’s always been that way, and we love it and we’re excited for it.”
