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Former WWE star Matt Sydal, aka Evan Bourne, was recently interviewed by Journey of a Frontman, and the following are interview highlights:
On breaking into the business:
“The first guy that gave me advice when I was really young was Kid Kash. He beat the shit out of me in the ring, he taught me a lesson the hard way in the ring. And then afterwards, he broke me down and told me everything that was wrong and telling me that I was doing the same shtick six months before. He told me. “You need to change. You need to grow. You need to get out of this place and move.” And he gave it to me the hard way. At that moment, it was the only time I ever considered quitting wrestling. Well, one of just a very few. I thought I either needed to quit or get better. And at that point, I made a commitment to do every single thing that he told me so that no one could ever say these things about my wrestling career again. That was just a huge motivating factor. I’d been training for maybe two years, I got ten years of training in twenty minutes with the guy.”
How the Air Bourne/RKO spot was planned:
“Randy [Orton] was the one who wanted to do it that night. I had actually mentioned it to him that weekend. I said, “Hey man, if I did Air Bourne, you can do an RKO. I’ve seen it done before.” And he’s like, “People have done it before?” “Yes, but we need to do it.” I was thinking down the line, that it would happen years later, and sure enough that next Monday night, it was just there in front of us and there for the taking. We took it and rocked it, man. It was fantastic. Even watching it today, it’s crazy how that crowd blew up.”
On the incident with Mason Ryan winning the match vote on RAW:
“There was no backstage reaction. I mean if anything, they were apologetic because it was a voting thing and they were still tabulating votes from the previous match with Kelly Kelly, but they were counting them against me and Mason Ryan.I had some words with some people after that match, but for the most part, we were just happy we got out of there and nobody got hurt. I just always wished I had better performance. With matches like that, you can’t predict what’s gonna happen. I did not think the fans were gonna pick him, but they did and I went with it, man. I thought I had him too, dude. At one point, I was literally beating him up. I was physically beating him up. I was on fire, but whatever, he put out the fire because he’s a giant.”
Bourne also discusses his favorite WWE match, AJ Styles, his move set, being introduced to wrestling, the guest host era and more.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
