Eddie Kingston

As long as I reach one person that goes, 'I feel what Eddie's saying, I feel Eddie's anger or pain,' whatever you want to say, in the ring or on promos, if there's one person, I can be like, 'OK, good, I did my job.'

When people tell you they always believed something was going to happen, I think they're lying.

The chip on my shoulder was just because I was a mixed-race kid. That was it. That's where that chip comes from. So whatever I did in my life, whether it was pro wrestling, fixing cars, or doing iron working, I had a chip because of that.

It always felt like I had a weight on my chest for like, half my life. Cause I just carried all this anger from like, second grade till now, you know what I mean?

I was just angry cause of my childhood. You know what I mean? So I carried, so I took that anger with me everywhere I went. No matter what it was, so it was always heavy on me.

The thing about wrestling in front of eight people in a bingo hall is that the spots still hurt. The chops still hurt. Your body still hurts the next day. But when you love wrestling, it doesn't matter. You do it for the pride and the respect of the business.

I've been out of my mind since before I can remember.

For most of my life, I thought I was crazy.

From the minute my uncles taught me how to throw a punch when I was 11 years old, I was out on the streets swinging for the fences.

Yeah, we all got problems, everybody does. What helps me is just saying in my head move forward, move forward because if I decide to hurt myself in any way I'm not just hurting myself. I'm hurting my family because they have to deal with the repercussions, not just me.

I just want to be a prime example for people.

Accepting love is very hard. Giving out love is easy.

To me, if you're a scumbag, just because you're a wrestler that's been in the business an 'X' amount of years I'm not gonna show you respect.

I've had doubts my whole career. I've had doubts my whole life.

That whole New York tough guy thing, I can't let anyone see me cry.

I believe God sent my niece and nephew to me not to stop wrestling because he knew good things were gonna happen.

I'm just me and if people cheer, they cheer. If they boo, they boo. As long as they're reacting, I'm good with it.

You're going to get everything you want when you come to an AEW show. You're going to get all different flavors of ice cream.

Detroit is a rough, rough place and that's how they like their wrestling, so I love Detroit.

Detroit are just rabid, rabid fans. They'll let you know if they're not happy with something. They're a hardcore group of people.

When I go on Twitter and see a guy from the independents doing something different and cool, I'm going to tell people about it.

I'm not going to forget where I came from.

One of my main problems with Mox is that he didn't use his popularity or social media with all of his followers and everything to put over places that he used to be at or people he used to run with.

To survive on the independents when I was making a living off of it, you had to do a Thursday show, a Friday show and Saturday and Sunday shows. You had to do at least four shows a week.

The street kid in me comes out a lot of times.

I've seen my father go hungry, but my brother and mom never went hungry. I saw my father do overtime after overtime just to make sure we were good and the family was safe. I come from that background, so if you love something - my dad didn't love his job. He loved his family, so he did what he had to do.

When I was at 17, I was just angry. I hated the world and wanted to fight everybody.

I hate that word superstars.

I just know when I see bad people, I like to call him out on it.

For us, in the ring, it's not just the technique that's the fundamentals, it's also for the people to understand what's good, what's bad.

I kicked out of my first wrestling school. Me and my old partner and a bunch of other friends, we were so desperate to keep learning, that we got our money together, we rented a ring and paid for Ted Dibiase to come and teach us.

I'm not gonna lie to you, I was almost 300 pounds at one point because I just didn't work out. So my career, it's just up and down and I'm my own worst enemy.

My career before AEW was one step forward, four steps back.

I don't hate on anybody who makes it and makes money. That doesn't bother me. It's who they are as people that bothers me.

I don't care if people do better than me with money and all that stuff. I will never hate on that because this is a business and we all got to try and make a living.

I used to tell a lot of young guys on the independents, 'Don't be a mark or a fan for letters, be a mark and a fan for dollar signs,' so it didn't really matter where I was, as long as I get paid.

I like doing the independents still. Because without the independents, I would've went nuts years ago.

ECW brought me back into pro wrestling where I found guys like Chris Jericho. ECW brought in Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko.

My whole thing with CHIKARA is that I love that it's PG, sometimes G even. It's for kids. The characters are for kids.

Every man bleeds, every man can get beat up.

If I'm going to survive and survive as long as I have in wrestling, I have to believe I'm the best.

No one is better than me - that's the attitude I have to have.

In third grade, a mom told her daughter not to hang out with me because I'm going to be like my uncles.

If you notice, when people start judging people, that gets me so mad. Because I was judged as a kid.

Tracy Smothers was the first guy to believe in me and my old partner Blackjack. He was the first veteran that we met at the time who actually went out of his way and was so open, honest, and wanted to help us. He just loved pro wrestling. It was insane to me how much Tracy loved pro wrestling and he loved you if you were a wrestler.

We're in this to be champions and not to be the opening act. Not to be a mid-carder.

Everything you do in life, you got to work for.

People say you deserve this and that, but no one deserves anything in life.

The goal for me has always to be a champion. Whether it's me and Mox as a tag team, the TNT championship, or the big one, the grandaddy of them all - the goal has always been to be the top man.

Fighting CM Punk was never the goal for me. He wasn't there when I first got to AEW.