Top WWE star Seth Rollins joined the Chicago Bears podcast to discuss various topics, including how WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels inspired him to pursue a career in wrestling.
Rollins said, “Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, I’ve been a huge wrestling fan for as long as I’ve been a Bears fan, the two things were, number one and number two in my life, pretty much as long as I can remember. When I grew up, my first guy was Hulk Hogan. He got me into it. The guy that really kind of let me know that this was something I could do or something that I was interested in doing is Shawn Michaels. Shawn and Bret, kind of came up in the mid-90s. Wrestling was getting a little bit faster. The guys with the stars were getting a little bit smaller. It was the first time that I saw someone who could draw a house, who could fill a stadium or an arena, who was a regular-sized person.”
On how wrestling used to be dominated by big men:
“In the 80s, it was the land of giants. It was Andre. It was Hogan. It was Savage. It was Warrior. These were the guys that brought the money in and put people in the seats, and Shawn and Bret were the first guys who were around six foot and moderate build that I was like, ‘oh, wait, I’m not going to be Hulk Hogan size, but I certainly could be Shawn Michaels size.’ I certainly could be Bret Hart size. I might be able to do this. I love Shawn. So Shawn’s been my favorite wrestler probably since I was about 10, 11 years old. He’s a guy who’s inspired me and a lot of my generation, where you look at the business now, the industry now, it’s so fast paced. It’s unreal what the next generation of people are doing. I’m almost 40 years old. So I’m like an old hat in this thing now, which is crazy to say, because I feel like I’m just hitting my prime. But yeah, I mean, Shawn’s the guy. He’s the guy that really inspired me to want to do this thing.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
