Shawn Spears has been wrestling for 20 years. It doesn’t seem that long for many fans, but time flies when you’re having fun, as they say. But it hasn’t entirely been a day in a theme park for Spears himself, as he recently told Renee Paquette in an interview; he was a recent guest on her podcast, The Sessions.
It was during the interview that he disclosed that it hasn’t been all that great and at times he has indeed hated the business of professional wrestling, but through his legacy and his soon to be born child, a son, his legacy will live on, no matter how far he makes it in an industry he has dedicated most of his entire life to.
“The reality is, it has been a love-hate relationship. It has been up and down and there have been a lot of downs. But yeah, there’s been times where I’ve hated this industry and the reason being is because it’s entertainment. Without pulling the curtain back too much, there are just things you’re not in control of…
So it can have a tendency to make you feel like you’re not good enough despite how hard you’re working, despite how much time or effort you’re giving to the industry and despite what the audience may be doing. It just might not be your number. This business doesn’t owe anybody anything. You’ve heard that before…
Anybody who has been in it for an extended period of time will agree it doesn’t owe us anything. It moves on with or without us…If you ask anybody, any wrestlers who come on here, who’s your Mount Rushmore? Number one, that is the most impossible question to answer, in my opinion. There’s so many categories, so don’t ask you that…
So what keeps me kind of motivated, and what keeps me kind of going is knowing that my legacy, the legacy I leave behind, will have nothing to do with pro wrestling, in my opinion. No one’s going to probably remember me in great detail after I’m gone, but my son will. My son will know what I’ve done. My future children will know what I have done…
My family knows what I have done. My nieces and nephews will know what I have done. If that is enough to kind of guide them down a path, a good path that can be beneficial to their life, and the life that they create with someone going forward, I’ve done my job on this earth.”
-via Wrestling News (Transcription)
He recently made his triumphant return to AEW TV after being absent for quite some time. After a run in the Indies of the professional wrestling industry, Spears was brought into the WWE’s developmental territories and was in fact a classmate of none other than Cody Rhodes at Ohio Valley Wrestling (2006). The two were actually a tag team there.
A run on the WWE revival of ECW would follow in 2008 but he would then be relegated back to developmental the following year…by then FCW. A return to the Indy circuit was inevitable…a run that would last until 2013. It was then that he would return to WWE developmental…now NXT.
He would remain on that platform until 2017 and then headed for the main roster—SmackDown specifically. It would last two years but unfortunately there were lot of lows during that time (despite a lot of support from the fan base)…may of his storylines leading nowhere, leading even to injury in 2018—a hand injury to be specific.
This of course brings us to 2019 and the start of AEW. It would be in AEW that he would have his most successful run in the industry. We must call spade a spade folks…AEW has had some trouble booking some talent, but they did fine by Shawn Spears.
Hopefully this run leads to something big for him; after all he deserves it. He also stated during the interview that soon, it would be perhaps time to hang up the boots for good, and it would be nice to win a major championship on this run. He stated this also during the aforementioned interview with Paquette. So…is this his last run? Perhaps, and in the end, it’s even more reason for it to count.
NEXT: More Cuts To The NXT Roster On The Horizon—Bodhi Hayward Cut For Reasons Undisclosed
