AJ Francis (Top Dolla in WWE) doesn't feel like stepping back on the gridiron.
Before he was a member of Hit Row in WWE, AJ Francis played in the NFL from 2013-2018, where the nose guard amassed a total of 20 tackles.
In August 2020, The Rock and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital teamed up to purchase the XLF for $15 million just before an auction for the league was set to begin. In a new conversation with MuscleManMalcolm, Francis was asked about potentially playing in the XFL when they re-open their doors.
"I mean, let me say this, do I think that I could play in the XFL and dominate the XFL? Absolutely. Go watch the tape. My last game in the NFL, I had six tackles as a nose guard. I would like to know the list of nose guards that have had six tackles in a game since I got out of the NFL. I guarantee you it's not long. Let me just talk the actual facts of the situation. But, I'm also 31 years old and football is a young man's game. So, could I do it? Yeah. Do I want to go back and have my body feel like when I was playing in the NFL? Not really, no. Now that I've not felt like that for three years, like yeah, I feel pretty good now. I don't want to go back to waking up and having to soak my legs and back every morning just to get loose. I'm off that now. People ask, 'Well, you were in wrestling. Doesn't it hurt doing that?' You got to realize, this is going to shock a lot of people, but wrestling ain't real. Yeah you take bumps, and yeah, you do hurt, but compared to 40 plays against a 300-pound man who's trying to kill me every play as I'm trying to kill him, it's not the same. It's not even close to the same. It's different levels of body movement aching pain. Also, at the same time, in wrestling I'm huge. I'm actually 6'5, 350. That's not a billed height and weight. That's actually what I am. In wrestling, a lot of guys are not that. Most people I have matches with are smaller than me and in wrestling, the story is, if I'm bigger than you, the whole match is me throwing you around and then you get me once, maybe twice at the end and it's over. That's the story of professional wrestling of forever. It was easier for me than it is for a lot of guys in the industry because a lot of guys are not my size so they got to take 15 bumps in a match. Look at my entire WWE run, actual back bumps that I took that someone gave me and it wasn't me doing my elbow drop move, actual back bumps I took, I took one the entire time that I was on camera in the WWE. It was a dropkick off the top rope from Santos Escobar where I controlled my whole way down. It was the one bump that I took that I didn't give myself. It was easy for me, but not everybody is that lucky because not everybody is the same size," Francis said.
Though he and Hit Row were released by WWE just a couple of months ago, AJ recently said that the door is never closed with WWE. Learn more here.
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