Ilja Dragunov spoke with Denise Salcedo this week to promote his upcoming NXT World Championship defense against Carmelo Hayes in the main event of night two of NXT Halloween Havoc 2023.
During the discussion, “The Mad Dragon” spoke about his trilogy against Carmelo Hayes, winning the NXT title and more.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On winning the NXT Championship: “This feeling is beyond words to be honest. It feels like my destiny is fulfilled. It feels like the right things came into the right place. I am at the perfect mental state right now, the perfect shape right now, I am the best I have ever been. So there’s no reason for me to stop, everything that I want to do is a create a reign, that pushes this brand — NXT — to the next level.”
On the Carmelo trilogy: “We created something that really pushes this championship. It shows how important this is. We presented a fight. We presented something that pushes things to the next level, because we both wanted to be champion, and we wanted to push things to the next level. Only one of us could survive. I was the one who survived. I remember the first time I met him was back when I wrestled Gunther and won the NXT UK Championship. I knew that this guy at the moment was probably at the finals of the Breakout Tournament and you could already feel at this moment that he has a certain aura about him. Only a few people have a certain aura about them right at the start of their WWE careers. The way he progressed, the way he made a name for himself, the way he presented himself in all his performances. He was a person I wanted to wrestle for a long time and create something memorable with for a very a long time.”
On NXT pride and the head-to-head showdown against AEW Dynamite: Title Tuesday: “The vibe was very very interesting because everybody felt that there is something historical happening on this day. The people on this brand put so much hard work so we’re like creating the best versions of ourselves every single time on TV, getting the attention of the people. And those icons of the business coming to this iconic show, pushing everything to the next level, I think everybody just gets more hungrier for this because we see what’s possible. We see what we can achieve together. We can reach our fullest potential, and the whole day just being around people, these people with amounts of pure knowledge, it was a historical, inspirational day at work for the entire brand.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to F4WOnline.com for transcribing the above quotes.
