Alexander Hammerstone appeared on The Wrestling Perspective Podcast to talk about a variety of topics.
Here are the highlights:
Whether his perspective has changed since he became MLW Champion:
“There’s still a lot more to do. There’s still a lot more to climb up. I think my only perspective change is now I am with a company who has put a lot of time, effort, and money into me. I’m in a prestigious position that a lot of people would like to be in. So now, I make these decisions, I’m not just representing myself. It’s become bigger than that. So now I’ve got this company, and the unique thing with MLW, what’s kind of cool about it is some people might be like, ‘Don’t you want to be with this company or that company that’s bigger?’ I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that MLW is just as big as WWE right now. You could see that as the negative side of things and say, ‘Oh, you don’t have quite as much outreach, or you don’t have to make quite as much money.’ But the positive aspect to that is now it gives me an opportunity to help lead this brand. So now it’s like, now as we take these new footsteps, and grow into these new markets, and make these new pushes, I’m kinda like leading that charge and it helps me stay hungry because there’s a lot of work that we can do, not only as an individual, but as a company.”
If he compares other company’s champion’s title runs with his to motivate himself:
“I think there’s always going to be an aspect of that. Whether it’s just your own ego, or if it’s more of the mindset of continuing to up your game and keep yourself on your toes. You know, but that being said, I made it a point to take the MLW World Championship and I took it to Australia, took it to England, I took it to Mexico, I’ve been to Japan. I’m trying to get back over there maybe by the end of this year or sometime next year. I’m trying to make this world championship the most traveled championship. I’m pretty sure I did that for this year out of all the major companies. So, you know, little achievements like that is a nice little feather in the cap, but you can’t help but look around and see what other people are doing and see what the industry standard is, and if nothing else, just the quality of the product and the quality of the matches is something that’s held to a higher standard, because if you have a dumpy match, and you’re somewhere in the mid-card, people will brush it off. But if everyone’s saying, ‘This guy’s the main event. He’s the world champion. Here’s the main event we’ve been building up for three months’, and the match shits the bed, now everyone’s looking at you with extra scrutiny. So it’s a cool role to be in, but there’s all that extra pressure as well.”
