My whole career, I've been climbing or chasing or hunting something.
— Finn Balor
I still can't believe I'm a professional wrestler in the first place. That hasn't sunk in yet. I'm sure I'll look back when I'm 50 or 60, if I make it that far, and think about everything that's happened.
I worry too much about the present to worry about the future.
We're all humans living on this tiny little rock, floating through space at, like, thousands of miles an hour. We should all just get along.
When I first went to Japan, I was wrestling under my real name. The Japanese people have a great amount of difficulty with the letters f, r and l. So three out of the six letters in my first name they couldn't say. It was a bit of a mouthful for those guys.
My parents have supported me everywhere I've went: U.K. to Japan, NXT.
I don't do well in social environments.
I've seen a lot of different training schools and dojos, and the sheer level of professionalism at the Performance Center and the state-of-the-art facility just knocked me for a six. It really blew me away.
I don't really like to think too far into the future.
I really believe in the power of positive thinking and the collective power of people's thoughts spawning something into becoming reality.
I have no intentions of getting in a UFC cage at all!
There wasn't one defining moment that I said, 'I wanna be a wrestler.' It was just something that was always inside me.
I'm going to look forward to the future as opposed to looking back at the past.
To go from a small wrestling dojo to the Performance Center was just mind-blowing. The sheer scale - I didn't think anything like that could possibly exist.
Just the extent of the reach that the WWE Universe has around the world is incredible.
Myself, Karl Anderson, and Luke Gallows are best friends. We travel together, we train together, we eat together, and we do a lot of things together.
It's almost like putting on a mask protects you from people's judgments and lets you completely flow freely, like, with all your aggression and our animosity against anything.
When you're in NXT, you're really fighting and trying to dig down deep and chase your dream.
You can only get better by challenging yourself.
Ireland has always been a nation of great athletes from the past: in the nineties, we had Sonia O'Sullivan and Steve Collins.
I don't see why we should alienate anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, nationality, religion, ethnicity.
I'm not a very emotional person.
People won't believe this, but I don't really like being the center of attention.
2010 was an incredible year for me. I won the Best of the Super Juniors, and went on to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title. That was an unbelievable achievement.
I grew up watching wrestling my whole life, so to get the chance to step in the ring that I've watched on TV so many times is a dream come true.
I spent a lot of time in Japan. To me, I felt like my career was kind of marooned out there. I didn't realize the extent of the reach that New Japan had in America and around the world.
If I'm going to draw something, I don't know the day before what I'm going to draw. It's just very much an interpretation of how I'm feeling that day and what I think is the coolest thing in my brain at that very moment.
With regards to the paint, I'm normally quite introverted and shy. I keep myself to myself, and I find that when I hide behind the paint, so to speak, I'm able to let myself go more and move more freely than I can without it.
For a long time, we had Raw and SmackDown, and there wasn't really anything else. The NXT Universe kinda opened up channels for wrestlers to come in from the independent circuits, like myself.
The NXT women are changing the way women's wrestling is viewed. It's an inspiration to be able to watch.
I think everybody in WWE and NXT want to be involved in WrestleMania. I can huff and puff and push all I want, but that's something you just can't rush.
It's been a bit of a struggle getting used to life in the States, adapting to a new lifestyle.
I think Finn Balor is more about confidence, a smarter version of Prince Devitt. Otherwise, they have the same core values, same techniques, and the same heart.
I didn't realize how much the paint was going to affect how I moved and how I walked. And it wasn't something that consciously happened. It was because the first time I'd done it was a Tokyo Dome show, I want to say in 2013-14, and I walked out there, and I was a completely different person.
Everyone that watches wrestling as a kid dreams of being a wrestler for WWE.
I can honestly say it was the greatest decision of my life coming to WWE.
I was big into hip-hop as a kid, and when I was eighteen, I got into dance and rave music, which was popular in Ireland at the time.
I'm normally a really humble guy.
The dojo system in Japan is something very unique. It prepared me not only for wrestling in the States and around the world, but it also prepared me for how to handle myself as an adult in the real world.
I always wanted to have sort of an alter ego.
I've been put into a lot of situations that could be stressful. That's really helped me mature, both as a performer and as a man.
I've always got a couple of tricks up my sleeve.
I want to be part of the growth of NXT.
The whole Demon character was designed for people to hate me more and to be scared of me, and it kind of backfired in the sense that people kind of like it now.
Going through secondary school in Ireland, everyone's like, 'What are you gonna do when you finish school? Go to college? Study business? Study electronics?' I was like, 'Well I kinda love wrestling, so I don't see why I should want to study anything else except wrestling.' For me, it was a no brainer.
Obviously, everyone wants to headline 'WrestleMania.'
If you ever have a question or a problem, if you approach Triple H, he might say the most-obvious thing, but it was the last thing you were thinking. As soon as he says it, you're thinking, 'Oh my, why didn't I think of that?' He's very smart, and we're very lucky to have him at our disposal in NXT.
Hopefully, I can be a good role model for kids, and they can grow up to follow their dreams just like I am.
I had to use a lot of the lessons I learned from fighting Samoa Joe and apply them to Bray Wyatt.
The 'Demon King' takes out a lot out of Finn Balor the man emotionally and mentally.
