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How do you feel about the likes of Ali, Buddy Murphy and Cedric Alexander recently being moved to RAW and SmackDown, and being integrated more with the main roster?
I was really excited for The Bollywood Boys, Lucha House Party, Lio, and Drake to find positions on those shows. They really deserve the credit for breaking that barrier first and foremost. Cedric and I were the first to really do non-cruiserweight matches when Cedric was doing matches with Bobby Roode, and they paired me up in special attraction matches against Nakamura and Andrade in NXT.
I think integration is what Cruiserweights were really missing all along because each of those examples lead to nothing but positive feedback from fans, but it never lead to anything further.
Your calendar looks pretty full right now. I believe you have 50 booked appearances leading right up until January 2020. Are you just trying to keep busy, or do you have a destination in mind for where you'd like to end up?
Yeah, it’s pretty busy. I haven’t really scheduled anything last November. There’s a couple things that got set early for the winter but mostly I got something like 55 dates scheduled between May and November, which is not bad for the first six months. Once everything pending gets set, I believe it will be somewhere around 60-70 shows altogether for the rest of this year. Imagine if I had been able to schedule the first five months!
I don’t really have a destination in mind to land. I’ve had contact with basically everyone but I don’t know that I have time to start until the winter and by then I may have filled that schedule already. I’m enjoying the freedom, I’m falling in love with wrestling all over again. I’m financially doubling what I would have if I had stayed in WWE. I may never want to give this freedom up. If I do land somewhere, a certain amount of freedom and flexibility will have to come with it.
NEXT: TJP on his former 205 Live colleagues stepping up
COMING UP: TJP on his Starrcast appearance
