Dolph Ziggler interview highlights

As reported earlier, Emmy winning entertainment reporter Chris Van Vliet from WOIO recently spoke with Dolph Ziggler in his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. He talks about breaking away from Vickie Guerrero, how he would have been pushed sooner if he was bigger and his thoughts on John Cena and CM Punk.

He talked about how if he was bigger he would have been pushed earlier, saying if he was 4 inches taller and 40 pounds heavier he would be “a multiple time world champion”. However he admits that he’s he glad he has had to work for all of his success because he feels it has made him better.

He also discussed CM Punk’s claim to being the best the world saying “He has to put it on a shirt. It’s almost like ‘Guys, I’m the best in the world, right? Just ask me!’ It comes off like he’s begging for it and if you keep saying it I guess you think it’s true.”

On being great at selling moves, “I do everything, especially when I’m getting beat up, If I’m going to run into something, I’m running into it full force and it hurts. But instead of hearing‘oh, is that guy ok?’ you hear ‘OOOOH!!’. My body’s on the line because I love this and I do it for a living”

On the topic of John Cena, Ziggler says, “The eight-year old kids, they still think that John Cena’s really good at stuff, other than being strong. And they buy the t-shirts and that’s great. Everybody else goes ‘well, I graduated high school. I get that [Ziggler’s] better than everybody else’”

On being compared to Shawn Michaels and Mr. Perfect: “Mr. Perfect, I was a big fan of his because we kind of had similar deals like wow, we’re almost too good at this that it looks easy sometimes. Huge fan of his, huge fan of Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair. Those guys who always wanted the spotlight even if they weren’t supposed to be in it. They were the guys, if they weren’t the main event, they showed up the main event to let everyone know that next time you put me in there”

On whether he or any of the [WWE] guys in the back follow what's going on in TNA: "Me, personally as a wrestling fan, it's something I've said before where I study movies, I study comedians, why they are getting these reactions; I watch all wrestling. And lots of us, because of the ever-changing roster for both sides, we're friends with half of those guys anyway because we were wrestling with them a few months ago. So that community, we all kind of follow each other. A lot of us watch it just because we love wrestling. We'll watch TNA. We'll watch Ring of Honor. I watch everything just to see what's going on and know where I need to be. 

"Even a good friend of mine, Mike Mondo, who was with me in the Spirit Squad, he's in Ring of Honor tearing it up. Everyone's always saying how great he's doing."

In a follow-up question, Ziggler is then asked, "There seems to be some storylines between TNA and WWE that are kind of overlapping right now. Isn't that weird? He responds, "I'm a little behind on [TNA] storylines, but yes. I heard that from several different people. So, maybe..."

Other topics covered were: getting more mic time, breaking away from Vickie Guerrero and his Twitter feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger.