Swerve Strickland has commented on the recent praise he has received, highlighting one AEW star as his role model.
Strickland is arguably on the run of his career right now, with the AEW star picking up a huge victory over former world champion Hangman Page at WrestleDream.
A number of top stars have praised Strickand’s work recently, with the likes of Adam Copeland and Kenny Omega giving Swerve a nod during the post-WrestleDream media scrum.
During his appearance in the media scrum, Strickland called the recent praise ‘beautiful validation’.
Explaining why Chris Jericho’s approval means so much to him, Strickland said:
“Speaking on Jericho, that’s a man that honestly…without a Jericho there was no Swerve because he’s the one that kinda was the multitool player of a wrestler for like the last 20 years.
“Doing his podcasting, having his band, being in movies, doing TV shows, doing all these different things while still having an amazing legendary run as a professional wrestler. That’s kind of what I wanted to be. I wanted to gel myself into that.
“But at the time, you weren’t seeing too many African-American guys in the wrestling world doing that. Shout out to like a Ron Killings who does that, amazingly.
“But I wanted to be the one to just take it up another notch. Bring that world a little bit closer to ours. So even if it’s the wrong kind of noise or the right kind of noise, I’m happy noise is being made.
“Just to know those guys respect my hustle and grind as a media person, but also as a wrestler is even bigger. That spectrum is like closing in and it’s getting really big on every side but it’s not too much.
Jericho was also in action at WrestleDream, teaming with Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi to face off against Sammy Guevara, Will Ospreay and Konosuke Takeshita.
Backstage news has emerged on a change to Adam Copeland’s entrance music following his AEW debut, which you can read more about right here.
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