Amazing Red Says He’s Humbled by People Calling Him Influential, Discusses His Influence on Will Ospeay

During a recent interview with Insight with Chris Van Vliet, former TNA X-Division Champion Amazing Red spoke about his career, how he’s been considered one of the most influential wrestlers of the last 20 years, and also about Will Ospreay saying he was a huge influence on his career. Below are some highlights from Insight:

Amazing Red on People Calling Him One of the Most Influential Wrestlers of the Last 20 Years

“I still can’t understand it. I still can’t believe it. Very humbling, but I will say what just happened recently in the TNA locker room. It came on the monitors: Amazing Red Hall of Fame, and I was still cringing about it inside. But once I went to the back, I saw Santana there. I saw tears in his eyes, and then I went to the locker room, and everyone’s there clapping and just hugging me and sharing stories of how I helped them in the business, and I’m just there like I have no idea, and it kind of just hit me where it’s like, wow, you did this, you really did do this. I’m just very humbled. There’s nothing else I can feel about this besides being very appreciative and giving the glory to God. I just feel like I was just a kid living a dream, moving straight, just moving straight. Nothing else in my pathway, and you could not tell me no.”

On His Ideas at the Time That He Thought Were Innovative

“A lot of the ideas of the things that came on my mind were because of how much they compared me to Rey Mysterio, and that’s amazing. That’s great. I used to love watching Eddie, Benoit, the whole cruiserweight division in WCW. Rey, obviously, but I did not want to be Rey Mysterio. Respectfully, I knew I had to wrestle like him because I was smaller like him, but I always had my own pathway of how I wanted to be as Amazing Red. It was very movie, martial artist, Japan lucha American style. I wanted everything meshed to give me the moniker Amazing Red. I was like, wow, you know, this guy really is amazing. I kind of screwed myself by doing that, by the way.

“Because that meant, like, every match I’m probably gonna have to try to outdo myself, which is what I learned from my trainer: that you can only do so much every single match. But Rey Mysterio is someone that I’ve been compared to, where I was like, you know what, I gotta change this up. I gotta do what I’m thinking, and if this move is done this way by 10 people, I have to be the one guy that did it this way, and then that move is cool from the top rope, but can I do it from the bottom rope? This move probably looks like a complete failure, but let me keep trying it and see if people catch up with it. And then it’s little by little, it started being my own lane here and there, here and there.”

On Will Ospreay Calling Amazing Red a Huge Influence on Him

“God bless that man, bro. He said a lot of cool things to me about helping him, and I see that he does it to other people too. So kudos to Ospreay, man, Ricochet, so many people, Swerve. A lot of these guys is bigging me up and saying all these great things about me. Frankie, Kazarian, bro, I love you.”

As noted, Amazing Red was announced for the TNA Hall of Fame Class of 2026. His induction will take place at Bound for Glory 2026 in October.