In an interview with Mark Suleymanov of The Inquisitr, former TNA Wrestling superstar Gunner discussed his time in the military, his time with TNA Wrestling, the potential of him joining WWE NXT and concerns that he could be too old, plus much more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
On his feud with James Storm: “To me, it was great, I think that they did a really, really good job of building the story between me and James and the animosity of the story, it wasn’t like one week we were teaming the next week we’re turning against each other, I liked that it was a six-to-seven month feud, but to get to wrestle James, always one of my good buddies and somebody I respected there. Since day one, when I started as security, he was always there as a helping hand, really believed in me and saw that I was driving down to Orlando on my own to try and get my foot in the door.”
On his concerns of being too old for the WWE: “They’re pretty honest with guys. There’s been buddies of mine who are 35, 36 years old that were told absolutely no, you’re at the cutoff age. I’m only 33 and if that was the case, I think William Regal would’ve told me we’re not going to waste our time. What I hear is that 35, 36 is the cutoff unless you’re somebody different, unless you’re AJ Styles who is a little older. I’m still pretty young, you can probably get another 10 years out of me if my body holds up.”
On what he thinks would’ve happened if he never joined the military: “I would’ve probably gotten signed quicker, I would like to think so, but being in the Marine Corps from 2002-2006, that kind of hinders me for about four years. I definitely think I would have been signed quicker, maybe like Ohio Valley Wrestling or something like that. It would have been awesome to be in the same class as Ken Anderson, Batista and Randy Orton.”
On why he thinks he never reached main event status: “I was never given a reason why they wanted to release me, the writers were pretty straightforward about going hey, you need to work on this and you need to do this and this better. There were a few times during my run with TNA where some young guys and I, like Sam Shaw and Bram, were given the ball and told to run, like when I wrestled Magnus for the title in Manchester in 2014. They give you that ball, you do nothing wrong and pull off a great match or storyline or have a great character and then all of a sudden, they jerk the rug out from under you.”
The interview is available in full at this link.
