Things will come and go, and your life will go on, but you don't want to get too ahead of yourself.
Rich Swann is probably the only guy who's more charismatic among this whole bunch than me, and I think it showed in our match.
At the Cruiserweight Classic finale, I said... I don't know if people had looked it up, or if they had heard it before, but it was an old Zen proverb. 'Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, you chop wood, carry water.' It can be interpreted a lot of ways, but for the most part it's about staying in the moment.
I grew up on WWE. Eddie Guerrero is my everything. He's my hero, as are Shawn Michaels and Tiger Mask. I tried to model myself after them.
I grew up kind of self-supported, that kind of environment, because my parents both worked for airlines.
So much of what I do has been based off of my heroes and guys I've watched come up.
I got to do a lot of good things at a young age. I really kind of knocked out my bucket list when I was really young.
I've done stuff in the past and followed in the footsteps of my heroes, and each time, it felt a little bit surreal.
Part of the reason why Kobe Bryant is such a big inspiration to me is because he was shipped off to the Lakers right out of high school. He went from English class to the Great Western Forum.
I was an all-sport athlete growing up. My dad, I think, hoped I would go to college on a scholarship.
Lucha libre culture was part of my wrestling upbringing. I'm Filipino, so it wasn't a part of my normal upbringing, but it's what gave me my start. I get a lot of my technical and high-flying wrestling from that.
I try to take each moment at a time.
I could program the VCR when I was really young.
I went to Japan and I lived there. I lived in Mexico for a year. I went to Europe. I lived in Canada.
A lot of the ups and downs for me, especially the downs, I feel like it came in a lot of indirect ways because I didn't appreciate what I had.
I got thrust into some great things when I was really young.
I've been hit in the head a lot, but I don't think I have any problems, but I can't, for the life of me, remember a lot of my road stories and good times. When times are bad enough, that's all you can ever think about.
It's really exciting to be able to represent the cruiserweights and go to Monday Night Raw. I grew up watching Monday Night Raw, and it's really a big dream of mine to perform on that stage.
I grew up watching Super J-Cup tournaments and things like that, and those were pretty cool.
When I was maybe 22, 23 years old or so, I was sort of floating in between New Japan, Ring of Honor, TNA - not really committed to one place.
