Finn Balor didn’t exactly arrive at the WWE Performance Center feeling grateful to be doing rolls in a Florida warehouse. After wrestling in front of tens of thousands of fans at the Tokyo Dome, Balor suddenly found himself back in what felt like wrestling school, and it didn’t take long before he started wondering if WWE was wasting some of the best years of his career.
Speaking on the Off The Ball podcast, Balor recalled hitting that wall just a few months into his original NXT run. He had already spent years wrestling around the world and couldn’t understand why he needed to start over.
“I remember being in NXT about three months. A couple months previous, I just done the Tokyo Dome in front of 50 – 60,000 people. And all of a sudden, I’m doing bumps and rolls in a warehouse in Florida. Preparing me for what? I feel like I am prepared.”
Balor was 34 years old at the time, and the clock was very much on his mind. He eventually took those frustrations straight to his coach, Terry Taylor, and made it clear that he thought WWE was burning through his prime.
“I remember having a conversation with my coach at the time, Terry Taylor. Saying like, ‘Terry, I’m 34. I’m wasting my career here. These are my prime years. I need to be in the ring. I need to be on the show.’”
Taylor’s response completely changed the way Balor looked at what WWE was trying to teach him. Instead of preparing Balor to wrestle, Taylor explained that he was trying to teach him how to keep wrestling for much longer. More than a decade later, Balor admits Taylor nailed it.
“He simply said, ‘Finn, the style you’ve been wrestling the last 16 years, if you continue that, you have like two or three more years left in the tank. I’m trying to teach you a style that’s going to extend your career and get you another 10 years in the ring.’”
“And here we are 12 years later and I feel better than ever.”
Balor also gave credit to the rest of the Performance Center coaching staff for helping him adjust to WWE’s approach, including Norman Smiley and Matt Bloom. Balor explained that while WWE is still professional wrestling at its core, working there required him to change the style he had spent years developing before joining the company.
“So I owe a debt of gratitude to Terry Taylor and a lot of the coaches at the Performance Center as well. Norman Smiley, Matt Bloom, all those guys really helped me kind of adapt to the different style WWE is because it is different.”
“It’s still a wrestling show, it’s still in a ring with four sides, but it’s a very different style.”
Balor might have thought WWE was wasting his time when he first arrived in NXT, but 12 years later, he sees those frustrating months very differently. What looked like WWE slowing him down may have actually been what helped keep him in the ring long after he thought his body would have started breaking down.
Do you think Terry Taylor was right about Finn Balor needing to change his wrestling style to extend his career? Let us know what you think and leave your feedback in the comments.
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