AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland pinpoints two legends that inspired him to become a professional wrestler.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Swerve Strickland recently sat down with James Williams. When asked who his biggest influences were that inspired him to become a professional wrestler, Strickland pointed to WWE’s Rey Mysterio and AEW’s Adam Copeland.
“I would say I was a Rey Mysterio fan and I was a big Adam Copeland fan. So those who are probably my two biggest inspirations ever,” Swerve Strickland said. “They felt larger than life to me, and Rey always felt like a comic book character popping out of the comic being a real person. Like, oh man, I can actually go meet this person. If I’m good enough to train and go up in the wrestling world, I could wrestle this person. I could face my Spider-Man in a sense.
“That always inspired me. And then his movements was always insane to me, and his colorful outfits, his entrance, that was just all magic to me. And then, when I started training and becoming a pro wrestler and stuff, I started studying, and I kind of gravitated toward Adam Copeland a lot more.
“I was like, okay, I feel my height, my size, if I was to look like a wrestler, I would look like Adam Copeland. So I feel like those are my two biggest inspirations, and what inspired me to get into it was honestly video gaming and wrestling and combining the two.”
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