Wardlow Names AEW Match He Never Thought Would Happen

AEW Superstar Wardlow recently sat down with Chris Van Vliet and discussed his match with CM Punk. He discussed how big the moment was for him, and his emotions heading into arguably the biggest match of his career.

"Honestly, I'm still waking up every morning just feeling like I hit the lottery." Wardlow said. "Like, I assume this is, if you hit the lottery, you wake up every day like, 'oh yeah, this is my life now'. Just kind of the feeling now. It just brought such a sense of peace and fulfillment over me. It's weird, like those big matches, usually leading up to it, I'm very tense, I'm very focused, I'm very tense. It's honestly kind of hard to be around me in those few days leading up to a big match because I'm so zoned in.

"And this time, I wasn't at all and I think it was because I simply didn't believe it. Like I'm not wrestling CM Punk in three days so it's another normal day. And then the day of the show it all hit me. It all hit me the day of. I was like, 'okay this happening'. That was possibly the most nervous I've ever been before a match, but that was also the most comfortable I've ever been in a match. It was a very unique experience. But yeah, the fact that I got to wrestle CM Punk, that's something I never thought I'd be able to do."

A lifelong dream was fulfilled despite the losing effort. Wardlow has great expectations this year, in another recent interview with PWInsider he expressed how it feels to be an AEW original.

"Yeah, I talked about this last night, actually. In 10 or 20 years, I am going to be so excited and proud to look back and say that I was one of the AEW originals. And that means so much to me because my career started — obviously, I did some indies but the world didn't know me," he said. "As far as the world knows, my career started with AEW and it's going to end with AEW, and I look forward to accomplishing and growing as much as humanly possible and reaching the stars throughout the next 10 years."

You can hear the full interview below

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.