Jack Evans Thinks He Got Soft and Lazy During His AEW Run

– During a recent interview with Chris Van Vliet for his Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast, former AEW wrestler Jack Evans discussed his time in the company, and thinking he got soft and lazy with his in-ring work. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Jack Evans on his feeling that he got lazy during his AEW run: “I feel for that first year, the run went good and we had a little place of a semi-comedic tag team, not straight comedy, but we were doing stuff with Kevin Smith and we had a place. Then there was the Mexican border. Me and Angelico got stuck in Mexico and it got closed for the COVID restrictions. We had a four-month layoff, I came back, had one match, and then in practice before a match, I got my face broken again. Then, I had another month and a half, two-month layoff and I feel after that, I never came back. I feel I deteriorated. I can’t even blame it on ring rust. I don’t know what happened, but after that, I never came back, we never had the same momentum, but it wasn’t one of those things where I felt like I was wrestling good and the momentum didn’t get started. I felt like I had deteriorated in the ring and it started giving me these self-confidence problems. Anyone who knows me, who has been in the locker room, I’m so nervous before my matches. I dry heave. I’m the most annoying guy in the locker room. When I step through the curtain, 100% confident and even cocky. With this thing, I’d go through the curtain and still be nervous as hell. After the COVID layoff and the layoff from the face break, I feel on a personal level, I never came back to wrestle like me, both character, in-ring, anything. Also, that salary contract made me a bit soft. There was even a little while where I got plump. I kind of fell off after that layoff and I only started getting back on the ball towards the end and by then, the company had already made up its mind on me. I did get kinda, not lazy in the ring, but I wasn’t as good in the ring and I was lazy outside the ring. It all started with the original COVID layoff and face break layoff.”

On suffering from in-ring deterioration: “It made me soft. Totally no fire, nothing. I just wasn’t going down and doing the lucha training, I used to always practice a little something to keep up on my skills, and I didn’t. I went through eight or nine months of nothing. The only exercise I would get was in the ring. I really do think it was my fault for getting too [internet connection issues]….basically, after I started getting that salaried money, I turned a bit lazy and I feel it was bad for me and helped speed along the in-ring deterioration.”

On taking the blame for not getting another contract offer: “You have to be realistic with yourself or else whatever problems it was, isn’t going to get solved and because I’m such a nine to five wrestler, I don’t really have anyone else to blame, except for one incident with Ken, where I busted open his lip, which I apologize to hell for. I have no heat with anyone, that I know of anyway, there’s no one politicking against me, so I’d have to really stretch it to be like, ‘Oh, it was Chris Harrington,’ even though it wasn’t. Part of the self-awareness is I don’t have another option of anyone to blame because I’m not knee-deep in the politics. If I’m getting released and Angelico is not and we were always together, in the same meetings, talking to the same people, who are you going to blame? It’s kind of obvious who the culprit is.”

Jack Evans on if he thinks it would’ve been different if he didn’t miss four months due to the COVID lockdown: “I don’t think, in the end, that would have changed anything. In the end, it really came down to me having an extended period of laziness. During that period, I probably would have been used more and maybe I would have stayed on the ball more if I didn’t have that big layoff. I really think, I didn’t have the right mentality when I was on salary. It felt like it was going to last forever.”

As previously reported last month, Evans revealed that his contract was expiring as of the end of April as it was not being renewed.