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Ethan Page On Becoming NXT Champion, Leaving AEW, Joe Hendry, Shawn Michaels
Ethan Page (@OfficialEGO) is a professional wrestler and the current NXT Champion in WWE. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida to talk about his surprising arrival in WWE, winning the NXT Championship in record time, why he left AEW, the first conversation he had with Shawn Michaels, the upcoming NXT move to the CW Network on October 1st, being the subject of one of Joe Hendry's famous parody songs and more.
Quote I'm thinking about: "Life isn't about being perfect, it's about being ridiculously passionate that people think you're a little crazy" - Case Kenny
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"I guess it is a record, if I'm wrong, it's because that's what I read on the internet. Fastest championship. Vic Joseph was saying this to me, he thinks that I have the most PLE main events consecutively in the fastest amount I'm on a really good run right now."
"Validating? I think that's the perfect word, validating. It's like, imagine your whole life you have this vision of what your potential could be, and no one around you sees the same vision as you. Then magically, the greatest wrestler of all time just has the same vision as you and is like, I'll let you do that, here I am doing it. Yeah, the boyhood dream, dude."
"I was hidden in one of these back rooms in this building, and essentially it was like, Hey, I don't know everything about you, but you seem like a guy that's never been given a fair shot, so I'm gonna give it to you."
"No, well also I'm not going to question it, because I've been in the game so long that someone looking me in the eyes and being like, I'm going to give you this chance, what you wanted to accomplish, you can try it right now. That was it for me. Someone's telling me I'm giving you the ball. So if you do well, we'll both do well. This whole thing has been extremely weird. Then to get the guidance of Matt Bloom and Terry Taylor and then Fit Finlay, any of these guys that I want to either pick something from or ask them questions, or they are just willing to just help you out. That's not something I've ever experienced. It's such a competitive business, especially everywhere else that I've been, you can have camaraderie with fellow wrestlers and stuff like that. But not many guys are just walking around being like, Hey, do you want to get better? This is how. No, because they want to do it themselves. They want that position. But here, especially NXT, I don't know the main roster yet, but with NXT, this is such a great environment to hone your skills and to get better."
"No. I had 70 independent dates scheduled because I was like, Oh, I got two kids. Got this house, these cars, I moved to America we just got our green cards. This is where we live now, so I have to make sure that my children are fed and the bills are paid. So no, I didn't."
"It was time. Yeah, it was time. And I wasn't getting what I magically got here, which was the opportunity to show what I bring to the table."
"Dude, I feel old! I'm training with 20-year-old college athletes that are freaks of nature. That's what this place is, breeding freaks of nature. And then here's my broken down 34-year-old ass in training and working out with these guys looking around like, Oh yeah, I'm the old guy now."
"I took all those independent dates, and I was just kind of betting on myself, trying to, I guess, get some upward momentum back into Ethan Page. I'm very big on following trends and patterns and I could tell that I was on a downward tick, and there wasn't anything that was going to change there. So I had to kind of change my environment to be able to change my momentum. I booked up, maybe I'm over exaggerating, but up close to 70 shows for the remainder of 2024 and I did a great uh wrestling show in Winnipeg. And on my layover from Winnipeg to Detroit, because I was landing in Detroit to drive for Revolver wrestling in Dayton, Ohio, I got a phone call a number that I didn't have my phone. They were like, 'Hi, is this Ethan Page? This is so and so from the WWE.' Yeah, sure! [They said] 'We'd like to offer you a contract this long, this amount...' I'm just like this is not real. I just go 'Honestly, that sounds fantastic.' They hung up on me. My phone rings instantly. 'Hi, this is so and so from WWE.' And I was like, whoa, wait, that phone call I just got was real? And you agreed to everything, [They said] 'So we would like to email [the contract] to you, have it signed, send it over over.' I'm like, whoa, whoa. Then I'm calling my wife, 'I think the WWE just offered me a job.' She's like, Wait, aren't you coming? Yeah, I'm on my layover. Like, I'm about to land, and I have to go do this show. But yeah, I think I'm gonna work for the WWE."
"So, I mean, it actually goes back pretty far, because when I came to AEW, my finisher at the time at Impact was a spinning rock bottom. I used to call it the spinning Dwayne. So I would use that as my finisher. But when I looked at the roster at AEW, there were like seven people that were doing a rock bottom, a urinagi, or some version of that as a suplex. And I was like, oh, it's very used. And the only person that was doing any kind of move where they're hoisting someone up like that, was Lance Archer, and he did it where the person was facing forward, no one was doing the razor's edge. At the time, I was doing the border toss on the independents as a false finish or secondary finisher. So I had just pitched that it would be my finish, instead of something that's been repetitive. I always tried to avoid any moves that I would do, and I try it here too. That's why I don't do the jumping cutter anymore. I just try and make sure everything that I'm doing is not being done on the show. So when you see me, you see something fresh, you see something different, and you see what's mine. It's like, oh, that's Ethan Page’s, whatever that is."
"So huge. Just the viewership alone. You are growing in one day it's like, oh, we're going from this amount of people being able to see you to this amount of people being able to see you. Selfishly, I'm excited, as company wide, like CW seems very proactive with teaming up with us to promote this as something huge. When you have the network that's excited to have wrestling to be promoted, I mean, obviously we're excited about it. I think it's going to be a very big collaboration."
"No [he didn’t tell me what was in it], I also said I don't care. I was just like, go for it. Whatever you find, go for it. Don't mention my kids and I don't care. Then he showed that stupid video. I'm glad you brought this up, because I told my wife that I really wanted to brag about this. It just didn't seem like a thing to say on social media. So I'm glad I get to do it on your show. My daughter is now a published photographer and a worldwide videographer. She filmed that video of me in the Bowser costume, doing curls on Halloween, and then a video game magazine put pictures out of my Sega Genesis collection. And I was like, Oh, it be funny if my daughter took these photos. So I'm just saying she's very talented for only being six years old and videographer for the WWE."
"It's probably Randy Orton. Yeah, I would say that is the [dream]. I mean, one of the best ever past 20 years here. How many more does he have? I don't know. I mean, if I look at him, I'm gonna think a lot looks like a million dollars. He's the guy. I mean, he's the bar as far as how you want to be as a wrestler, he’s great. The Rock is obviously numero uno. I don't know how many more matches he plans on having. I don't know how many Egos Edges he has left in his career."
"My wife, my children and the coaching I have here."
