Former WWE Superstar Carlito recently spoke on the Chair Shots To The Cranium show about his WWE run. The former Intercontinental Champion was released from WWE eight years ago. He’s currently traveling the world and working the independent circuit.
Carlito discussed what he has been able to learn since being let go from the company and how much different of a performer he is from who fans saw in WWE:
“I think I’ve had time to really think about things,” Carlito said. “I enjoy the slowed-down pace. What I’ve learned is kinda like what I think the great athletes like basketball players and stuff what you start to learn as your physical abilities start to dissipate or whatever. You start to adjust to succeed otherwise.
“I feel like a much better wrestler just because of new ways that I have found to workaround situations and entertain people. It’s like a total difference performance now than when I was younger when I was just worried about how high I could jump or what flip I could do.”
WWE’s developmental system is a lot different from what Carlito experienced back in 2003. Carlito was a part of WWE’s then-developmental territory of Ohio Valley Wrestling before getting called up to the main roster. Nowadays WWE has established NXT and the Performance Center, giving young WWE stars a plethora of sources to better themselves.
Carlito hasn’t experienced the NXT product first-hand, but hears good things about it. He did note, however, that one thing that bothers him about the system is that performers need to adjust to working the system’s style instead of their own unique one:
“I don’t know much about NXT, I don’t really see much of it,” Carlito continued. “I heard it’s a great product. I heard the [WWE Performance Center] is a state-of-the-art thing like you know, I wish we had that in our day — we didn’t have that — so you know they have a whole staff training. Not just wrestling, but weight training and all kinds of stuff
“I think it’s great. The only thing is I’ve always been a fan of not throwing everything into one bucket, like having different styles. I feel like a lot of those guys just go into a system and instead just work the system’s style and they start to deviate from what makes them unique.”
H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions
