Chris Van Vliet recently interviewed WWE United States Champion Austin Theory ahead of his big match with John Cena at WrestleMania 39:
Austin Theory on why he felt he was going to go to WWE since he was 8 years old:
“I think it was just one of those things where I completely, I don’t know if you’ve had an experience where you just completely know you’ve got it, and it just felt that way at eight. There was no, ‘But what if I don’t grow up to be tall enough? What if I don’t grow up and I’m not strong, or I don’t have this.’ It was none of that. I just knew it and it was like that at 8, 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 25, it just never changed, and I’m grateful to be able to have that mindset and stay in that one lane. It was a constant drive to just make sure that it was going to happen.”
On what he feels is going to happen in the next 10-15 years:
“Man, you know, I gotta really think about this, because I know in 5 to 10 years, this interview will come up, and I will be right again. Honestly, I will say, just really being at the top of the WWE and people really fully understanding that because I get it. Right now I’m making my climb to stand at the top of that mountain, but I think once you get to the top of that mountain, it’s about staying there. So I would say manifesting being at the top of that mountain and making sure that nobody gets up there with me.”
On the first conversation he had with John Cena:
“Man, the first conversation came about, and it’s funny because I brought up that photo that he posted on his Instagram. It was at the Performance Center one day and we were all leaving. We got told, ‘Hey, just everybody stay. We’re gonna have a little meeting before everybody leaves’, and out comes John Cena. He took the time out of his day to come down there and talk to everybody that’s aspiring to be on the main roster. A lot of us weren’t even on NXT TV then. So this was the very beginning for me.”
“He told us, ‘You know, I’ll answer any questions you guys have, but if there’s anybody that wants to talk to me, you know, personally, I’ll stay here all day. I’ll go in this room in the office, and you guys, one by one, can come in there.’”
“I remember waiting like three hours to talk to him. I just went in there and I remember the first thing I showed him was the picture of me as a kid where I couldn’t afford the actual, like, the shirt and the wristband, so I made my own kind of off brand stuff. But I was eight years old, and I showed him the picture. I was like, ‘Man, this is probably crazy, but check it out.’ He’s like, ‘Man, that’s not crazy, that’s awesome.’ We got to sit there and I kind of just really just asked, you know, everything I could, you know, because this is the source. This is the man that, you know, held it down for well over a decade. It was a lot for me to take in though at the time because he was spitting knowledge. But you know, I’m still, you know, ‘Whoa, this is John Cena’, so I’m just trying to take everything in, man. But that moment specifically, I’ll never forget. I just remember leaving that room that day like, ‘Whoa, like, I’m here. I met the person that inspired me and motivated me, and now it’s on me to build this journey and to actually make it happen and I know I can do it.’”
On who he felt helped him the most during his early days:
“Man, I always like to say AR Fox. I like to start with him just because, and people that don’t know who that is, that’s somebody that’s an independent wrestler as well. But that’s the guy that trained me from the beginning and really took me under his wing and and you know, sped up the process for me. I was doing shows in front of nobody to doing really good shows like with Evolve and WrestleMania weekend Independent shows, and then getting noticed by the WWE. But he’s definitely somebody I owe a lot to just because of the time he put into me and the limits he was willing to break to go that extra mile for me.”
On losing his first name for a while:
“Yeah, so I remember walking into, and this is the time Mr. McMahon was head of creative, I remember the writer bringing my promo and the promo said, ‘Don’t call me Austin. It’s just Theory.’ I was like, ‘What? The name is gone?’ I was wondering why. I spoke with Mr. McMahon about it, and he felt that, you know, Theory could be a name that stood alone. He felt it had enough power behind it. Also, I think he just wanted to get away from that comparison of Stone Cold because we just did the WrestleMania stuff. So I think maybe out of circumstance, that’s maybe why it happened.”
“The funny story about Austin Theory coming back is I just got a text one day, or like that just pretty much said, ‘Your Austin Theory.’ Then I showed up to the show and the matches were on the wall and there was my full name again. I’m like, I guess I’m Austin Theory again. So I thought it was kind of funny. Like, that’s how I find out, you know what I mean?”
“I never felt negative about it because Theory just meant the most to me, because I’ll always have my first name. People are always going to know me as Austin. But Theory was just that name I came up with as a kid. Even as a kid I was searching for, you know, besides it being a cool name that I came up with, and nobody had it like how can I give it meaning. For the longest, Theory was supposed to mean, you know, a Theory is unproven, but to me when you’re unproven, that means you’re not proven, so you can always get better. If you’re somebody that’s proven, that’s it for you. So me being a Theory always being able to change, to adapt, to evolve, that’s what it’s all about, and I still feel like to this day, it still works for that.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Also, be sure to subscribe to “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” on your mobile device by clicking here if you have an iOS device or here on your Android device.
