Rohit Raju On Why He’s Keeping That Name, Talks About Building It Up

In an interview with Fightful, Rohit Raju spoke about keeping is current name and not going back to Hakim Zane after leaving Impact Wrestling. He worked as Zane on the independent scene prior to joining Impact, and still does in AAW.

He said: “Yes. For the longest time I was using Hakim Zane because at IMPACT, when I first there, I was nobody. I was jobbing left and right, left and right. I was like, ‘Nobody wants Rohit Raju on the show.’ There was no value there. I remember Scott asking, ‘Why don’t you use Rohit?’ I told him flat out, ‘Because there’s no value. I don’t do anything here. There’s no value.’ As soon as they flipped the switch and then I flipped the switch, I built the name up and was like, ‘Hey, can I still use this name?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, man. Go ahead.’ I wanted to keep it because I helped make that into something and so I didn’t want to give that up. So now only at AAW do I use Hakim Zane, but even that I might retire soon and just use Rohit Raju. It’s a name that people know. It’s a name that people recognize. It’s a name I worked really hard on developing and building up and I would like to keep that. I’m 107 years old. I feel like I’m 17 years old. I’m jacked out of my mind forever. You young punks don’t look like me. I’m a walking bag of money. But no, man, life can beat you up at times. But it’s the energy. I love being around people with good energy. Some people are negative and life is beating them up. I’ve been there. I like to help those people. I like to talk to those people and hopefully they can get through it. I like to be around people like my small circle, they help me out and we laugh and we cry and we joke. To me, having that positive energy, living and not existing, that keeps me young, man. That and I’m always in the gym 24/7. Everyone’s like, ‘Well, I don’t know if you can wrestle this because you’re old.’ Man, get that out of here. I work and my cardio and the way I look, the way I move is better than some guys that are way younger than me. It always will be just because I don’t think like that. I just do it. I just go out there and try to kick butt, man. I don’t know what it is, man. It’s these genes. That’s what it is. Mocha skinned man with genes, baby. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.“