NXT favourite Ricochet has spoken exclusively to Mirror Sport about the perils of being a high-flying wrestling star.
The 30-year-old, from Paducah, Kentucky, is currently wowing the WWE Universe with his displays for the yellow brand.
He was, up until this weekend, the NXT North American Champion. It was a title he'd held for 160 days before being defeated by Johnny Gargano at NXT: TakeOver Phoenix .
Ricochet has just completed a memorable first year under the WWE umbrella, after signing with the company and its developmental division early in 2018.
He was on Saturday named the brand's Breakthrough Star of the Year as fans get accustomed to seeing his unique, high-flying style in WWE.
That style is far from new for Ricochet, real name Ricochet, Trevor Mann, though. He racked up some 14 years on the independent scene before arriving in sports entertainment's biggest company.
It's a wonder, then, that his all-action approach to matches has remained so outlandish, given the inevitable damage being done to his body.
It was a topic he discussed with Mirror Sport as part of a two-part exclusive interview with the team. Here, Matty Paddock poses the questions.
I'm keen to talk about your in-ring style, particularly as it's so high risk. Given you've been wrestling for so many years now, how aware do you have to be about the toll that takes on your body?
Oh I'm broken! [laughs]. But I think the love of it overtakes the struggles that we have to go through, and not just me, because a lot of the guys here have been doing it for like 12, 15-plus years. There's wear and tear on every single one of us.
We love doing it and love to go out there, but we are all hurting. And football is the same thing, or hockey or rugby, they're all hurting. But we go out there and love it.
Luckily, here in WWE, they have a mega, awesome medical group. They're there at every show. If something is hurting even slightly, they're gonna ice it or something. They take care of us so well.
For 14 years before coming here, I just never took care of my body. But since I've been here in NXT, they're so keen on us taking care of ourselves, and that's why there's such a great medical staff to say 'you should take care of this, or that.'
But, again, day to day, we love it and, if we had to, we'd go out there and wrestle on a broken leg. Here they'd be like 'maybe you should just take it easy!'
Given that style is so risky, how much say do you have in how much of that you can include in a match - are you heavily involved in that process?
Oh, they let us - especially if it's a TakeOver or television or something. The coaches are there to bounce ideas off and stuff, but at the end of the day they let us be us.
We make our match and we do 'us', you know what I mean? They do say 'maybe if you did this or tried that, this would be better' or something, but, we get to be us and they don't push anything on us and say 'no you can't do that!'
They let us be ourselves, which is awesome.
Whether it's the stuff you created years ago or when you get a new idea for a move, what's the time frame in terms of how long it takes to perfect it?
I don't do any new moves! I just do the same stuff that I've been doing for 15 years but have kind of perfected. I just kind of try to find different ways.
There are so many different characters and sports entertainers here, I have to figure out different ways to get into my moves that I do because everyone has a different offence and I need different counters to go into my moves and that's more down to tape watching and stuff.
You can watch Ricochet compete in a six-man tag team match featuring NXT's top talent when WWE airs HalfTime Heat at halftime during SuperBowl 53 between New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams on Sunday night.
Ricochet will team with Aleister Black and Velveteen Dream to face Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano and Adam Cole.
Halftime Heat will air on WWE Network, the WWE app, WWE.com and WWE's Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages at 1.15am on Monday, February 2.
