Ariya Daivari appeared on The Wrestling Perspective podcast to talk about his time in WWE and what the future holds for him in pro wrestlng.
Daivari was asked if his love of wrestling has gone down after being in WWE:
“I kind of still follow it. I go on Twitter and you can see all the highlights. I haven’t watched Raw or SmackDown in a long time. I know there is a famous quote that was going around about a month ago when Buddy Murphy said that he only watched Raw and SmackDown through Instagram or through Twitter, or something like that. I’m like, yea, me and a bunch of other guys at WWE do the exact same thing. He’s telling the truth. I haven’t watched a full episode of Raw or SmackDown in years.
At the time I was actually there so I got to see, but I keep up with it on Twitter. It does kill the drive a little bit because the biggest thing to me is once you become a wrestler, you do kind of find out some of the secrets of the business, but you’re still not in WWE. You don’t know fully how that operates. You may know how wrestlers put a match together, but that’s about it. Once you get to WWE, and you see the curtains fully pulled back, and you see how it is, it kills the passion a little bit because at least for me personally, I realized how much your career in WWE is out of your hands. It’s 100% up to the office if they want you to succeed. It’s as simple as, are you going to do a lot of jobs? Are you going to get any mic time? Are you going to get vignettes? Are you going to get 6 minutes to wrestle or are you going to get 20 minutes to wrestle?
So there are a lot of variables that make it a little bit challenging to get over. That was one thing that kind of like, oh sh*t, no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are, if they don’t pick you to succeed, then you’re not going to. Buddy Murphy is a perfect example of a guy who is really good at wrestling. He seemed pretty over with the crowd, but for some reason they just didn’t want to go with him, and that was it for him. Same with Aleister Black as well too. He’s a really good wrestler. He’s really over with the fans. They want to see him succeed, but for some reason, they didn’t pick him. When you have that realization that someone just has to pick my success no matter how hard I try, no matter how good I am, it kills your spirit a little bit.”
The entire interview can he heard at this link.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit “Wrestling Perspective Podcast with Jason Powell” with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.