During an interview with WWE’s “The Bump”, WWE NXT 2.0 Champion Dolph Ziggler talked about his career renaissance that happened in NXT and more.
Ziggler hinted that him becoming the NXT Champion wasn’t the original plan: “It’s pretty wild. You know, I don’t want to do like in character stuff but like, this is a cool moment. I’m slightly richer, I’m just kidding. It’s awesome. I had no idea I was going to be NXT Champion. I didn’t plan on it. All I wanted to do was check out some new talent scout amount, see who’s got what it takes to go to the next level at some point, maybe report back, say, hey, Raw, hey, SmackDown, hey Vince McMahon, I see something and these guys, these gals, they could do something big in the future. Let me get my hands on them and next thing you know, two weeks later, I’m the NXT Champion. I would say it’s crazy to me, but I guess I got like 30 or 40 titles.”
The former World Heavyweight Champion admitted he was feeling stale before NXT: “The difference between those two, [that moment in 2013], I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. I won’t forget this one either because I didn’t plan on it. All I wanted to do was set an example and show everyone what I can do when I want to, and I caught everyone by surprise, I felt a little stale. I don’t ever get out of practice. I’m never out of shape. I will never ever be tired, even if I did a two-hour Iron Man Match for WWE, I will always be there to deliver 100%. I felt stale as in, you’d see me for 2 or 3 minutes on Raw and you would go ‘Oh, Dolph is pretty good. Aww, he got beat, okay.’ I said to [Bobby] Roode, ‘We are too good to just be sitting here,’ because you can’t stay complacent. The world’s definition of complacent is nothing like mine. I don’t sleep, I go to the gym, I stay awake, I applaud, I think, and that go we need to make something happen. Because it’s ‘What have you done for me lately?’ People can pat you on the back for something that happened eight years ago, but they want to know what you’re doing right now. ‘Why aren’t we talking about you?’, and you have to make them talk about you. You can’t just hope for the best, because no one else is looking out for you.”
Dolph Ziggler is set to defend the belt against Bron Breakker at NXT Stand & Deliver on April 2nd.
(h/t – Fightful)
