Josh Alexander On His Friendship With Jake Something, What He Learned Watching Wrestling As a Kid

Josh Alexander recently discussed his friendship with Jake Something, what he learned from watching as a kid and more. Alexander, who made his return to Impact TV at Slammiversary, appeared on the debut episode of Cody Deaner’s Wrestling is Life is Wrestling podcast. You can see some highlights below, per PWInsider:

On watching wrestling teaching him to like what you like and not care what others think: “For me, because I had the contrast of my stepdad in the room and saying, ‘Why are you watching this dumb stuff?’ [and my grandma being in the room] the lesson I took away from it was – ‘You can like whatever you want if you enjoy it.’ My grandmother, who never said a cross word to anybody would turn [to my stepdad] right away and say, ‘Let me like what I like!’ If I can say anything from being a young wrestling fan … if you like something, even if it’s weird to the bulk of people at your school… wear that Degeneration X shirt and be the weird wrestling guy if that’s what makes you happy. That’s what I did. … If I can teach a life lesson to my kids it’s not to conform.”

On his On his tough upbringing leading to his current positive mindset: “My [dad] didn’t have a dream to push himself. He kind of self-sabotaged himself before he could actually fail. Which is something I did time and time again throughout my childhood. The ‘you can’ts’ [in my house as a kid] were far more than the ‘you can do whatever you want.’ In my house [now with my kids]… can’t isn’t a word you can use. I’m trying to prop everyone up at all times. Like you said with me, my fitness [journey], my wrestling [career], I’ve kind of willed this into existence. But, that [mindset] didn’t happen until I discovered wrestling.”

On what he learned from Johnny Devine in wrestling school: “This is all my responsibility. No one else is going to pick up the slack for me. If I really want something… I gotta take it.”

On his friendship with Jake Something: “I can’t be friends with someone until I wrestle them. We can be acquaintances, but the second we wrestle… it happened with me and Jake Something. We knew eachother for years, we were always buddies, but we wrestled eachother once and it was so kick ass and awesome. He was amazing. I came to the back and we leveled up in our friendship right away.”