Exclusive: Al Snow on OVW, Mahabali Shera and exactly how Vince McMahon influences careers

Al Snow is a man with many strings to his bow

I believe you're still wrestling at 55 years old. What's the secret?

I'll be 56 in July, and the secret to still wrestling at 56 years old is...you've got to be just a touch insane.

Every day, I hurt to some degree or another, and if I didn't wake up tomorrow and feel like somebody had taken a cricket bat and beaten me from head to toe, I'd ask my son to kick me right in the w***y, so that, that way, I'd at least feel normal for the rest of the day.

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In terms of Impact Wrestling. Being Scottish, I loved all of your British Boot Camp stuff, and the subsequent rivalry with Grado - but one person who springs to mind more recently that you shared a ring with was Mahabali Shera, who I believe is back in Impact after a spell with WWE. He seems like a man with all the potential in the world. What was it like working with him?

He does have all the potential, but here's the thing. It's only because nobody really knows this because of lack of experience, but you can have all the potential in the world, but the thing that takes the longest for you is to find your voice, find that thing that works for you.

Some people find it really quickly, some people will go years before they find it and create that persona. Look how long it took The Undertaker. No-one really pays attention or realises how long he was in the wrestling business before he became the Undertaker, it was about 10-12 years. How long had Steve Austin been in the wrestling business before he became Stone Cold?

Stone Cold wasn't always Stone Cold

I could go down the list of guys who've been in the wrestling business ten, 12, 15, 20 years before they clicked, before they hit the right thing. For me, it was 14, 15 years. Sure, I had success. I remember getting into wrestling at 18 and a lot of old timers said, "You're probably not going to make any money until after you're 30, kid."

It takes years and that's a kick in the old t******es that it takes so long, so much time, so much experience to really learn what you need to do, why you need to do it, when to do it to get the most out of it and in what way to do it. Sometimes it takes so long that, by the time you've figured it out, you're too old to do it.

No matter what process you have, it's going to take you time to figure that out, and that, for some people, happens quicker than it does for others. A guy like Shera, it's just taking him more time.

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