WWE Cruiserweight Champion TJ Perkins spoke with Brian Fritz of Sporting News about winning the Cruiserweight Classic.
“It’s crazy. For me, it’s been such a long road. The bell rings and it’s like this weight lifted off your shoulders. You just think about all the things that you went through to get there. And I think it’s the same for a lot of athletes in that position. Then the ceremony starts and, for me, I thought about a lot of my heroes when they had their first big one. I thought about (Muhammad) Ali when he won his first world title against (Sonny) Liston and I thought about Shawn Michaels when he won his first world title. Eddie Guerrero, same thing. I could replay those celebrations in my head, like, I remember everything they did. I remember how the crowd looked, how the atmosphere felt, all those different things. Shawn Michaels, for example, I was there live, which was pretty cool for me. So before you know it, yours has unraveled and there’s other people watching yours and you’re like, wow, it’s hard to believe it’s real.”
When asked about Triple H, he credits WWE for being such a professional environment and stated that Triple H was easy to work with.
“Yeah. It’s been such a pleasant experience being here as a professional. I’ve had such great open and casual and professional interaction with all of the office and administration, all of my peers and everything. What I was stressing to a lot of the guys — and it’s weird because I’m young but I’m one of the senior members in the locker room already — I would stress to a lot of the guys that, I’ve been everywhere, I mean, everywhere, and you go places and you have a wonderful locker room and just a nightmare of an office. Or you have a wonderful office but a nightmare locker room. I’ve never been in a place, until now, where you have both. This is the first place I’ve even been where it’s across the board that everything’s so wonderful. Everybody is so supportive; it’s a family atmosphere. Everyone is so helpful and approachable. Triple H, everybody has been really wonderful. I was able to speak with him the first week we were here for the first round. I spoke to him in the span of five days more times than I spoke with any other person of administration or boss I’ve ever had anywhere else in the span of five years. I spoke with him more within five days. That’s how engaged he is and how passionate he is about it. He encourages that in everybody and I think that’s a healthy atmosphere. That’s the way it should be. He’s a workaholic and I think he respects when other people are, too.”
When asked what it was like to be Cruiserweight Champion, Perkins was very happy to be in WWE and on the main roster. Perkins added that he has a lot of friends in WWE like Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens.
“I’m in such incredible company being there. I’m going to Memphis Monday night and with the locker room that “Raw” has and so many of them are my friends from before and people that I came up with. Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, these guys — they’re so incredibly talented. I think that adding the cruiserweight division to that, it’s kind of overkill. I don’t know that there’s ever too much of a good thing but if there is, we’re getting pretty close to it because that’s incredible to have all of that. And to be at the forefront of representing this on a show like that, that I grew up watching, it’s incredible. I don’t even know what to expect even if I was about expectations.”
You can read the entire interview here.
