At a young age, I was very aware I was different and not perceived in a good way. For a lot of my adolescence, I struggled with that, trying to identify where I belong and who my real friends are.
If anyone understands the enormous mountain that cruiserweights like myself have to climb, it's WWE champion Daniel Bryan - who not only climbed that mountain but now stands atop it.
If anything, who I am and my background helped propel me and helped me stand out.
Nothing hits harder than that: nothing more frustrating than your body giving up on you before your heart does.
There are no limitations. There are no barriers. Nothing can stop you, and nothing can define you but you.
I feel like a lot of Indian fans don't know about my Indian background, so it's funny online that a lot of fans call me this Pakistani dude. No, I'm Indian, too.
There wasn't a defining moment or match or even a person that made me want to wrestle. It all just sort of happened. Kind of like puberty.
I'm oddly comfortable in the ring.
What people don't realize here in WWE is, you can go out in any company, and you can have these crazy, five-star matches, and you can do all this stuff, and you don't have chains on you. The trick in WWE is to do it within this confined little box.
I am the guy who always gets put in the tough spots. I'm the guy who gets put in these really dark spots, yet somehow, I shine through.
I was that 16-year-old who loved WWE, and I wanted to be a pro wrestler, but I didn't understand why I had to be the bad guy. I wanted to be like Jeff Hardy - I wanted to be like Rey Mysterio - but I was told I had to be the guy who screamed terrible things about America and attack people from behind.
Anything worth changing is not easy to change.
I was like, 'Hey, I love highflying. I love lucha libre. Can I just put on a mask and pass myself off as a luchador?' Everyone was like, 'You're going to do what you want to do,' so that's what I did for the first four or five years. I just put on a mask and pretended to be this luchador.
I think '205 Live' is the ultimate underdog story. This isn't a knock on any other brands; you have your stars on 'Raw,' you have your stars on 'SmackDown Live,' and I almost feel like NXT already has this amazing face to continue building stars, but '205 Live,' that is not the case. There is no foundation. We are not capitalizing off of stars.
My wife herself had an upbringing where she wasn't allowed to pursue what she wanted to do because of her parents. She wanted to go into photography and journalism, but because classes ran so late, she had to be home at a certain time. We don't want that for our daughter.
I am from Chicago, but my dad is from Karachi, Pakistan, and my mom is from New Delhi, India. So, I've got a little Paki-Indie fusion going on here.
The biggest thing with the '205' guys is that we are trying to build the brand and each other, which makes it more difficult, but we are all stepping up to the plate.
I will always rep '205 Live.' I will always support '205 Live.' I will always be the heart of '205 Live.' I will always be watching because you will never know when the heart of '205 Live' will beat again.
My dad is really the reason I have this hard work ethic. I can fully remember him leaving home at 5 o'clock in the morning and not coming back until midnight.
I think being the only Pakistani wrestler in WWE will bring some attention from the country as well. I'll do my best to do Pakistan proud and give them something to cheer about.
