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Alex Shelley Praises Matt Taven, Discusses ROH Changes Over The Years

August 13, 2019 | Posted by Jeremy Lambert
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– Alex Shelley spoke with Wrestling Inc over SummerSlam weekend about a variety of topics. Highlights are below.

On Matt Taven Compared To Daniel Bryan & Austin Aries: “I think he’s awesome, in his own way,” Shelley said. “I think all three of those are very different competitors, so to compare them would be doing somebody an injustice. I’ve said this a lot in interviews, about Matt Taven specifically, but I feel like he’s mirrored my own career in a lot of ways, or we’ve at least been in a lot of the same places, as it were. I’ve honestly the utmost respect for him, he’s worked really hard, and he’s had to eat a lot of s—. He came up in wrestling the same way I did and the same way a lot of guys in my generation did and for that I give him a lot of credit.”

On ROH Changing Over The Years: “It’s totally different,” Shelley responded. “I feel like I’ve popped in over the years at very unique times. I debuted here in 2003, and I think we came back—me and [Chris] Sabin—in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, we got to see a lot of changes. I’ve seen the different bookers, I’ve seen the different regimes, and quite frankly I think the one thing that kind of defines this company in particular is, for better or worse, it springboards a lot of guys, right? Less so, now, it is an end point for some guys, which is cool if that’s what gonna make them happy.

“The struggle of the people in charge though is that some of these guys just aren’t here for too long. I think from a fan perspective though that’s in their best interest because what you get to see is a development, the maturation of these guys who go on to become superstars across the world. A lot of the reason these guys get picked up by other companies, or get the spotlight put on them is because of the things they do here. They have the freedom to do that here and they have the capacity to do it here. They have the potential to kind of express themselves in that manner.”

On Returning To ROH After Leaving Pro Wrestling: “To be fair, it was all orchestrated a couple years back,” Shelley began. “I am a physical therapist assistant, that’s a four-year medical program that you have to be involved in. This is my second four-year degree, I was pursuing a Master’s Degree in business at the time too, and I decided to deviate my course a little bit, alter my path. In doing so, looking forward to the future, which I try not to do too much now because you know plans can change if you’re emotionally attached to ‘a’ and ‘b’ happens, then you could be disappointed.

“The logistics of this situation were that had I gotten accepted into my program, which I did, in 2018 I would spend a good amount of time doing clinical rotations. … I knew full well that was going to be my reality if I got accepted into my program, when I signed my Ring of Honor contract back in 2016. So, I signed a two-year deal, kind of forecasting that, ‘Man, this is potentially going to be it for me, too.’ It wasn’t an easy decision, at the time there were a lot of things going on in wrestling—as there are now—and I kind of had to figure out what path I wanted to pursue.”

article topics :

Alex Shelley, Jeremy Lambert