William Regal’s contributions to the pro wrestling world need no introductions. In his career spanning multiple decades, Regal has been part of numerous top promotions and helped cultivate talent as well. Regal also planned on taking a break before Bryan Danielson called him.
After getting released by WWE earlier this year, fans wondered what the future held for William Regal. As it turned out, it meant going All Elite as Regal debuted during the AEW Revolution pay-per-view.
While speaking on AEW Unrestricted, William Regal talked about his journey to AEW. Regal revealed that he planned on taking a one-year break from pro wrestling until Bryan Danielson contacted him.
“Very quickly. I was checked out. As you can get older, and you hear all these things when you’re younger about how ‘time flies when you get old,’ it may have only been a couple of months, but once I was no longer needed in my former line of work, I’ve done nothing but do this for a living since I was 16 full-time, apart from a couple of years off with different things that had gone on health-wise and a few injuries, I had done nothing but wrestling. That’s it, I had a great run and I’m going to take maybe a year off except for, I was thinking about this time, I would start looking for the odd things in the UK, just so I could go and see my family and go home for a bit. Then, I get a call from Bryan Danielson. It sounded very exciting, just to go back and be talent, basically.
As soon as I walk in the door, everyone seems to be asking me to do other things. ‘You can do this.’ A lot of that, but for the last ten years, I’ve been doing a lot of everything. It’s been nice to just go out and be me. I’m going to do things anyway, I can’t help that. The reason I ended up with the job before is I know Bryan and all these people, is because I will always be at the ring showing people stuff and I got to know a lot of people over the years because people did that for me in Britain. Once they realized I wasn’t going anywhere, I couldn’t have any better wrestlers take me under their wing and teach me and show me and put me into places. I felt that was part of my…if I don’t do that, I’m not leaving this job in the right way.”
William Regal is currently managing Bryan Danielson and Jon Moxley as the two are now a formidable tag team. We’ll have to see how their team will be booked in the coming weeks.
h/t to Fightful for the quotes
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