Arik Royal gives his take on Cameron Grimes' growth throughout the years.
The long-time veteran and multi-time champion with CWF recently spoke with Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling and spoke on the NXT's development over the years. Royal recalled the first time he met Grimes more than a decade ago and was impressed with his work ethic when he first saw him.
“In 2009, this little skinny, big head kid Trevor Lee comes in, 14-years old and I didn’t know who he was but I knew — see, I train in Sanford [North Carolina] now… and he was training out here, out in Sanford and then his dad, he used to work for OMEGA, he knew coach Jim and I and he brought him up to one of our shows and the rest is pretty much history. I had a 14-year old and a 15-year old kid pushing me to get better because I saw the look in their eyes and the work ethic that Trevor put in to get to where he’s at now, but that helped me because I was like, ‘I gotta keep up with this kid because if I can keep up with him, then I know that I’ll be able to be and keep up with anybody in the ring around the world,’ because to me and I’m not just trying to sound bias because I’m close to him but to me, I feel like he’s one of the best wrestlers in the world and you know, WWE is slowly and surely showing that here and there. They’re showing it with his character and everything, but I’m telling you man, you already know. They go out there and let him have a Trevor Lee match, a Trevor Lee CWF match, these people are gonna be like, ‘Yo, this Cameron Grimes dude is legit’ and I’m just gonna be sitting there like, ‘Duh, been legit bro….’ he definitely helped motivate me," Royal said.
Royal isn't exclusive to any one company but did say he would love to get signed some day when asked about it. However, Royal noted that there are still matches he would love to have that are only possible on the indenpendent scene.
“Well I feel like… obviously the easy answer is yes, I would love to get signed somewhere and make money doing what I love to do which is wrestling and entertaining the crowd and putting my body on the line for the crowd to be entertained. But, the long answer is I just wanna go out there and be able to — if I go and get out there in front of a major company, it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna give you a match. You got six minutes, show me what you got.’ Like, okay. That ain’t no problem bruh. That’s a walk in the park for me. The decision [is] not gonna be hard for me. The decision’s gonna be hard for you, and it shouldn’t be. If I go out there and kill it and then you try and test me again, I go out there and kill it again and keep killing it, then you have no choice but to sign me… But like I said, I would love to get signed so I can showcase what I’m capable of, but at the same time man, there’s so many matches that I wanna do on the independent scene and a lot of people are making more money in the independent scene what they’re doing [than] getting signed. So, that’s the other side. Do you wanna get signed and make money or are you making enough money right now, not signed and do you want to continue to do that? And some people are happy doing that and some people are happy getting signed so, if I’m able to get signed first, great. But if I’m able to go out here and make money off independent wrestling and make just as much money doing that, then I’d be much happier — it wouldn’t [make] any difference to me I guess, to be honest. Whichever comes first," Royal said.
You can check out the full interview at the top of the page and the written article at this link.
