I did those two TV matches in WCW against Kevin Sullivan and Meng, and within five minutes of walking into that locker room, I was like, 'I don't want to be here.' I could tell this is not the place for me. And the dream was still WWF and getting there.

'Vikings' has been so many different challenges, and some of that is, at times, you have to be big and imposing and violent and vicious, and then you have be pulled back and withdrawn and just more layers and more time to portray those layers, too.

As glamorous as WWE may seem, you're probably eating at a Waffle House at 1 in the morning, and you're probably going to see the Ring of Honor guys there, too.

To me, the best part of coming up in that, kind of the last era before it went that way with the FCWs or NXTs, kind of the farm system, is that, you know, wrestling Jimmy Valiant in front of 10 people in Cleveland. We didn't touch. I think we did two things, but we were out there for 20 minutes.

Wrestling has to be more aggressive. It has to be bigger; it has to translate to the back of a football stadium. With acting, when that camera is up close, they can see your nose hairs twitch, and you have to pull back everything for it not to look clownish. There is that different mindset.