Finn Balor On Wanting To Defend NXT Title At WrestleMania, Being In The Ring With Edge In NXT

In a recent interview on After the Bell with Corey Graves, Finn Balor discussed wanting to defend his NXT title at WrestleMania, being in the ring with Edge, and much more. You can read his comments below.

Finn Balor on wanting to defend his NXT title at WrestleMania 37: “For me personally, if I could defend the title one night on TakeOver and the next night on WrestleMania, that would be a dream scenario for me. Double defense. I really feel, Karrion Kross, I empathize with his situation and having to relinquish the title being injured. I really feel like he deserves a title shot whether it’s at TakeOver or WrestleMania or sooner or later. He definitely deserves a title shot.”

On being in the ring with Edge on NXT and his admiration for Edge and Christian: “It was so cool. Obviously, I’ve hugely admired Edge and Christian their whole careers as professionals. When I came to WWE and NXT, they had transitioned out into retirement and they were doing other things. I’d speak to them at length about how I admired how they gracefully transitioned out of wrestling to the next stage and into the next chapter of their life and how they’ve done it with grace and respect and didn’t kind of dwell too much on the past. I’ve really admired how they’ve done that, and I expressed how I’d hoped I could have the same class and dignity to do that when it’s my time. I had really no idea or expectation that I would be in the ring with either of these guys at any time in my career. Having that in-ring respect and life respect for Edge, and then to be able to share that moment in NXT was pretty mind-blowing for Finn as a human outside of wrestling.”

On the reaction from friends after Edge’s appearance: “We get so caught up in what we’re doing, you don’t really understand what you’re doing at the time until you look back a couple of months later, sometimes even a couple of years later and go, ‘Wow, that was a really cool night.’ When it happened on that Wednesday night, I thought wow this is cool, but I’d become so used to being around Edge, in the locker room or backstage at events, that I was accustomed to being around him and you kind of forget that the interaction you had was on TV. One thing that I know was the next day, I was getting texts from my buddies at home in Ireland that never text me about wrestling. The Thursday morning, they’re all texting me going ‘What’s Edge like? Was he cool?’ That’s something that’s on a different level because my real friends from home are texting me about this guy. They don’t care about the matches. That’s when I knew it was like a different level.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit After the Bell with Corey Graves with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.