I relate everything to amateur wrestling, including the way I watch basketball and the way I watch football. My brain thinks as an amateur wrestler. That's who I am.
— Jake Hager
Cesaro should be world champ. I'm not afraid to say it, Cesaro is my favorite wrestler.
Let's come together, let the people stop fighting each other, but let them fight in the octagon.
I feel like being a professional wrestling has definitely made me a better MMA fighter.
MMA fans and pro wrestling fans are similar in that they care about their sports very much. They want to see that you're serious and not making fun of them or the sport that they love.
Your natural instinct when people are throwing punches at you is to back up. That just makes it more dangerous for you. You'll get hurt that way. You've got to teach yourself to go forward, move your feet and move your head. I'm not going to lie, that was tough for me to learn.
I'm making MMA great again for pro wrestlers.
I am Jack Swagger. My background, it's there for the world to see, and you look at MMA today, you look at boxing today, you look at professional kickboxing today, you need that entertainment value. You want people to relate to you as a character, as a personality. Honestly, that's what they're going to remember.
When I was competing at Oklahoma in college, I remember always getting a lot of anxiety before wrestling matches. Almost to the point where, 'Oh my gosh, man, this is a lot.'
When you get in the cage with me, you'd better be ready to go 35 minutes, not just 15.
Luckily, I feel like I was a late bloomer as far as my body developing. I really didn't start developing until I was like 18, 19, 20 years old.
For me, the wins and losses in pro wrestling never mattered. The thing that matters is the time on television to tell that story. If you have a two-segment match on television, whether you win or lose, both people's brands win with a great match.
When you get to go out and perform on a great pro wrestling show, it's awesome. It's hard not to enjoy it.
I've been wrestling since I was 4 years old, so I have over 30 years in some form of wrestling, non-stop in my life. For me, it's who I am.
Chris Jericho is on the Mount Rushmore of professional wrestling.
I grew up in one of the most prolific high-school-wrestling programs in the country, and MMA fighters are more successful when they have that amateur-wrestling background.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got in professional wrestling was use the exposure from cable's number one rated television show to transition and move on to what you want to go into next.
Once you're an amateur wrestler, you're always an amateur wrestler.
Pro wrestling is all about staying fresh.
In this world, I feel like we all need to be nicer to each other.
I would say to the critics that they don't have a black belt in time management like I do.
I grew up with two cousins from North Dakota who were junior national champions. They're a lot older than me and I looked up to them as my older brothers.
A long time ago I learned how to shut my mouth, listen to my coaches and put trust in my coaches.
I was never the best athlete, but I knew how to be coached and I knew how to work hard at it.
Whether you speak English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, everybody can speak wrestling and it's really cool to go to different cultures and societies and see how the littlest things we do as performers influence the biggest things.
Coming to WWE, where they treat the talent a certain way, I really gravitated toward Bellator because you saw the trend in fighters wanting to go over there because they were getting better deals and getting more freedom with it.
Yes, pro wrestling is damaging on your body. It hurts.
When I was leaving college, getting ready to graduate with a degree in finance, I had job interviews for months and months - and nothing really was moving like a real opportunity. Meanwhile, a lot of my wrestling teammates at Oklahoma had started getting into MMA training.
Toward the end of my career with WWE, I found myself in a comfort zone. Looking back at it now with a little more perspective, it was killing me.
I need to wrestle, I need to compete.
All I want to do is go out there and win. That's all that is important to me.
I've heard that I'm a wrestler and not a real fighter, but I have nothing to prove to anybody.
In my first fight, I acknowledged it. I'm a professional wrestler, this is who I am, who you know me as. But guess what, I've also been wrestling since I was 5 years old - real wrestling - amateur wrestling, Olympic wrestling.
I have a lot of experience with the lights on bright - a lot of people watching and performing on live television.
In addition to being gifted athletically and being the strongest guy in the room, Cesaro is very smart upstairs. He can go in the back and wrestle a match out in his head, then he'll add his Cesaro-isms in the ring to really make the match special. He knows exactly where to put things and make a match explosive.
Pro wrestling fans love surprises, so let's surprise them, and not just give them the old stuff.
We The People' is public domain, any American can use that.
I think it's surprising for a lot of people to see Jack Swagger crossover to MMA because they know Jack Swagger more than they know Jake Hager.
I'm lanky and goofy.
The nerves with WWE performance is more the live television angles because we have time limits and have storylines we want to get through in that time. You're going to forget a lot about the spots.
MMA is very difficult; you can't just be good at wrestling. You need striking, kickboxing, jiu-jitsu and countless other things.
I'm a conservative. I voted for Donald Trump and back in 2016 everybody was talking about, 'Oh my God, here's another TV character trying to run for the presidency.' They didn't really take him seriously.
Growing up in Perry, Oklahoma, there's not a lot going on, so we would go wrestle anywhere and anyplace we could. It really is who I am.
Before I signed with WWE, I thought my athletic career was done. I was going into the finance industry and I just thought I couldn't compete any more. But the mind is a really powerful thing and you can unlock your potential if you choose to ignore what your mind is telling you.
All Elite Wrestling completely changes the entire landscape of pro wrestling.
I'm a competitor. I had that reputation in my time at the WWE. I would walk into a locker room, start wrestling with someone, and all I'd hear is, 'There goes Swagger again.'
My junior and senior year in college is when I first realized what MMA is and really started liking it. I went the other route - I went into the entertainment field and started wrestling professionally, and I did that for about 11 years.
As a fighter, I'm not one of those people that wants to prove I can go out and throw strikes.
From the beginning, make no mistakes, I'm a prizefighter and doing this for the money. Money first. And then championships.
People know my name, and because of that, I have more leverage as a professional fighter. And as a professional fighter, as a professional wrestler, that is something we are all battling for. We want to make our brand a name brand and a household name. And that essentially gives us more leverage and helps us provide for our families.
