During a recent appearance on the “AEW Unrestricted” podcast, AEW star William Regal commented on what he originally had planned following his release from WWE, how his AEW debut came together, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his initial career plans after his WWE release: “I was checked out. As you can get older, and you hear all these things when you’re younger about how ‘time flies when you get old,’ it may have only been a couple of months, but once I was no longer needed in my former line of work – I’ve done nothing but do this for a living since I was 16 full-time, apart from a couple of years off with different things that had gone on health-wise and a few injuries, I’ve had nothing but wrestling. I was like, that’s it, I had a great run and I’m going to take maybe a year off except for, I was thinking about this time, I would start looking for the odd things in the UK just so I could go and see my family and go home for a bit.
On how his AEW debut came together: “Then, I get a call from Bryan Danielson. It sounded very exciting, just to go back and be a talent, basically. As soon as I walk in the door, everyone seems to be asking me to do other things. ‘You can do this.’ A lot of that, but for the last 10 years, I’ve been doing a lot of everything. It’s been nice to just go out and be me. I’m going to do things anyway, I can’t help that. The reason I ended up with the job before – I know Bryan and all these people – is because I will always be at the ring showing people stuff and I got to know a lot of people over the years because people did that for me in Britain. Once they realized I wasn’t going anywhere, I couldn’t have any better wrestlers take me under their wing and teach me and show me and put me into places. I felt that was part of my…if I don’t do that, I’m not leaving this job in the right way.”
“I was checked out, Bryan called me. ‘That sounds like fun, exciting.’ I love being around young talent who want to do this. It turned into a job for me with my former employees. I had a great 10 years there being able to do that. A lot of other things, but that was the main thing was being around a group of talent. I would never like there to be a day where there isn’t a wrestling business. Although I’ve worked for other companies, I’ve never worked for a company, I work for wrestling because I would help anybody who is interested. I wouldn’t force myself, but if you come to me, I would hate to be at a time like when I was younger because there was no way to get into the wrestling business when I started. I never heard of a wrestling school until I came to America and in Britain, you had to find a wrestler to get you in somehow or you were an amateur wrestler. So I had to find a way and then stay in it. It was a different day and age. I just want there to be a wrestling business.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
