WWE star Ilja Dragunov discussed various topics with Michael Fairman, including the influences on his in-ring style.
Dragunov said, “Different different inspiration in that sense because for me, my style is one of the requirements that I have is it’s got to be simplicity. It’s got to be intense. It’s got to be vicious. But it’s got to be simple because in a real fight, you can’t pull off moves that are too complicated. I mean, like it’s still professional wrestling, of course, and it’s poetry and motion, but I believe in simplicity, and I believe that certain blows already look like, ‘Oh my god! That’s — oh, that must hurt,’ and that’s kind of the way how I put my stuff together, there are a billion examples. Like, I — even if you look for the H bomb, for instance, it’s pretty much stolen out of MMA from Dan Henderson because I’ve seen it and I was like, okay, what is more vicious than a person laying on the ground and I’m just going to charge this person with an absolutely loading forearm while he’s still laying on the ground. Let’s try that. If you look through another move, like which is the Constantine special, which is like a tiger faint or 619 through the ropes into a discus lariat. This is just crazy ideas that I come up with when I play with my son.”
On if it takes him a while to formulate everything:
“No. It takes me a second to get the idea, and then I just get do the things that you need to do with all ideas that you have is to try.”
On the matches he’s most proud of:
“Yeah, definitely. Like I had a I have great chemistry with a lot of guys. People were talking about GUNTHER. People were talking about Carmelo Hayes, the matches I had with Trick Williams on NXT, the match I had with uh JD McDonagh, which is a very, very underrated person in my opinion, in that sense. like uh I’m proud of every work where I feel like the styles just flow into each other and you can create the most authentic organic performance.”
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(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
