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Mike Bailey spoke about his in-ring style ahead of his match against Will Ospreay on Impact’s Bound For Glory PPV tonight.
Speaking to Zack Heydorn of Brass Ring Media, Bailey said, “There are two very important parts to that. The first one is my martial arts experience and the fact that I already had an athletic background — something that I basically mastered as much as you can when I started professional wrestling. So, it’s not like I started my professional wrestling career mirroring other wrestlers, I started my career with a skill set that I had to protect. I had things that I liked. I had professional wrestling that enjoyed and wanted to do and there were other forms of media that I wanted to incorporate within my wrestling like martial art films — of which I was always a huge fan. The other is, in the last ten years of my wrestling career, I travelled the world so much and what you understand when you do that is how important it is to be able to adapt and be able to do different things — not stuck in your own pattern and your own rhythm. Pro wrestling is different wherever you do it. There is always a cultural difference that affects the audience. There are expectations. The promoter’s expectations. How your opponent will expect the match to go. And I think being able to understand all that is what’s led me to be so adaptable.”
Bailey also talked about when he thinks pro wrestling is most intersting during the interview. “I think pro wrestling is at it’s most interesting when two people who don’t know each other, have never met, and don’t speak the same language, get together in a room and put together a flawlessly choreographed fight scene,” said Bailey. “I think that is the most beautiful part of professional wrestling. Mike Bailey on the art of professional wrestling: Anyone in the world could have a good pro wrestling match if they had an infinite amount of time to put it together. Knowing the goal — to go out there, to put on a show, to put out something that’s memorable and will create an emotional connection with the audience. Literally anyone could do that if I had a whole team help them script the fight and we could micromanage everything. A big part of the art of professional wrestling is that it can happen ten times a week with no preparation and no control over the environment. It’s portable by definition.”
You can watch Impact’s Bound For Glory PPV on FITE TV tonight at 8p.m. Eastern.
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