EC3 has had an interesting career path.
After spending much of his early years on the independent circuit, he earned the opportunity to join WWE’s developmental system in Florida Championship Wrestling, which later morphed into the company’s NXT brand. Upon his departure from WWE, EC3 returned to the independent scene, while also rejuvenating his work through his arrival to IMPACT Wrestling. There, EC3 truly found his footing and met some seasoned veterans who helped change the trajectory of his career.
In a recent appearance on The Wrestling Perspective podcast, the two-time IMPACT World Champion regarded Hall of Famer Kurt Angle as a massive influence. “I was talking about the MJF, step up to the next level kind of feud he needed, which he had with [CM] Punk. That would have been my feud with Kurt. When EC3 came into IMPACT, it was midcard. It’s kind of funny. It was entertaining. It was, ‘This guy’s a d*ck,’ but to be a top guy, to be a world champion, to be a face of a company, you have to have a vicious side.”
“There has to be a danger to you. You have to be a f***ing killer at the same time. It’s very easy, especially today with how wrestlers are. They don’t live it or feel it or they don’t see that next level. They’re just going from match to match and move to move. And to me, not wearing the battle wounds that they’ve had over that course of time to get them to that moment — because it’s very easy to be, ‘people like my music, people like when I do this taunt, people like when I do my finisher’. It’s so easy to do, to make yourself step up to the next level, like Kurt did that for me.”
EC3 also named multi-time tag team champion Matt Hardy as another big help to career. “Matt Hardy, real in-depth storyteller and a lot of context and Easter eggs within the work he does. I always appreciated that. So working with him, it was a lot of fun to get to that next level of subconsciously planting things in people’s heads that maybe they don’t recognize now, but if you look back on it, they see the silver lining that brought us to this moment.”
Upon his exit from IMPACT, EC3 then returned to WWE in 2018, where he bumped into 16-time world champion, John Cena. “I never worked with them, but Cena as a mentor and a guy I would turn to for advice and just general buddy stuff…Not even asking questions, just listening to him talk as a perspective of the top guy of the industry, what’s required to be there. I did it on a very lower level, but what I’ve heard him say and talk about, I really try to apply to my work.”
During his later work in Ring of Honor, Jay Briscoe served as an influence for him as well. “Jay Briscoe brought a lot out me,” he said. “I think he was one of the best wrestlers that, wrestling fans know him, but he’s not a mainstream guy. But he was so good and very accepting of how I saw this story play out and totally on board.”
“You go to Ring of Honor and you’re thinking it’s going to be all about the moves and the high spots and that. But I’m like, we just need to have a physical, gritty, fight to us and it’s got to be subliminal. My goal too now is to do that for other people. So, within NWA, Thom Latimer is a guy, I want to be that [for], so he can be brought to the level he should be at. I’m very happy with the kind of work we’ve been doing thus far.”
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