ROH's Roderick Strong Reveals Why He's Stayed With ROH, Training With Jim Neidhart, More
Ahead of this Friday's Best in the World pay-per-view, ROH star Roderick Strong spoke with The News Hub about why he's decided to stay with Ring of Honor, as well as several other major topics in his career. You can read the highlights below, and read the full article at this link.
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Why he's stayed with Ring of Honor:
"Opportunity and to be in a position to have bigger high profile matches and grow as a performer. As a performer, sometimes it really isn't understood that I started with Ring of Honor when I was so young that I experience outside of the local Florida Indies was not very high. When I travelled with Ring of Honor, I had go to CZW and learn a lot. When I was TNA my time there was great but at the time putting me in a bigger position there was not going to happen so wasn't what I wanted.
I wanted to travel the world and I wanted to grow as a performer every way possible and I didn't feel that was going to happen there when I was there at that time even though I appreciate my time there. Ring of Honor allowed me to do that and they've allowed me to find my place in wrestling and find out who I am. Some roads are longer for some than others and I think the last couple of years I've had an opportunity to come into my own."
Training with Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart:
"It came about because my dad and dad's buddy's wife worked at a doctor's office and she was actually the front desk receptionist. Jim Niedhart would come in there because it was his local physician and one day my dad's buddy called him and said hey, do you want to be a pro wrestler and my dad was sure. My dad had an athletic background so even though he was a little bit of an older man about 38-39 years old, he was why not it would be a good hobby and was always about trying to stay in the best shape as he possibly can. I didn't know who the trainer was at the time. Being a big wrestling fan and being so young 12 at the time, my parents were separated so my dad said I'm going to bring you to this practice but you have to be well behaved. I started freaking out when I realised exactly who it was and that I would be going there 3 times a week. Eventually from going and watching Jim just saw how excited I got about going. He eventually let me get in the ring and play around. It was just something from watching it visually and studying it so much that it I was able to do at the moment and something I saw that it was something I could do. He saw a little something in me and with the Hart's starting so young Harry Smith living relatively close and he said my nephew is close and he knows how to wrestle. He said maybe you should wrestle around. I was 12 at the time and I believe Harry was 10 at the time and I was the first guy that he wrestled around with.
Relationship wise, we've all been busy doing are own thing and we run into each other we keep up with each others career's and it's interesting to see people from that long ago and how well their doing. I spoke briefly when KES was in Houston, it was a pretty busy day. I'm sure they'll be back around at some point. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see him (Harry) and we've trained together other a few times here in Tampa because he used to live here. We would train, grapple and stuff. We talk as much as we can."