Jack Perry Looks Back On Last Several Years Of His Career: “I Wouldn’t Change Anything”

Jack Perry opens up about the last several years of his pro wrestling career.

Sitting down with Renee Paquette for the latest episode of Close Up was Jack Perry. The interview was recorded right before Perry was set to begin his run in the 2025 AEW Continental Classic tournament, in which he filled in for the injured Darby Allin.

At the start of the chat, Perry was asked to reflect on the last several years of his career, which included him being off TV, and one of those stretches was due to his fight with CM Punk at AEW All In 2023. Perry did not specifically mention that, but said he feels like he’s grown and would not change a thing.

“I feel like I’ve grown a lot from it, but I feel like the growth came from a lot of… I feel like it sounds dramatic to say pain but it was not the nicest of times, for most of that time. I think it really freed me in a lot of ways. It’s like before all that almost feels like another lifetime at this point to me and I think back to how I felt before that and I think a big thing I had was like… It sounds silly — I just wanted everyone to like me. I was new to being on TV and this was my dream job that I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid and I just wanted to do it perfectly and I wanted everyone to like me.

It’s not something I don’t worry about in my real life so much, but this was different. I wanted to kind of micromanage it and make it perfect and have it be the dream that I’d had. So then when I would come up short of that, it was very disappointing, and I think coming up short of anything sucks but then doing it in such a public way, and then there are a million people telling you, ‘You’re a piece of shit’ and whatever. I don’t know, it’s hard, and I think through all that, I finally realized there are some people who are never gonna like me no matter what I do, and in a way that was really freeing because then I was like, well, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. What do I wanna do?

Things happened and it just amplified by like a hundred times, and I just realized there are people here that I’m never gonna win over at this point or win back or whatever it is. The people who really matter to me, I think I’m good with. But I don’t know. A little controversy is fun too… It’s funny because if you had gone back 10 years ago and someone had shown me a crystal ball and said this is all gonna happen, I would have been like, to me? Are you serious? So now also, it kind of is what it is and I think as much as some people would probably want to, I wouldn’t change anything.”

Perry competed in the Gold League of the 2025 Continental Classic and finished with six points in his block. He is scheduled to be in action at AEW Dynamite: New Year’s Smash, where he’ll be challenging Ricochet for the AEW National Championship.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Close Up w/ Renee Paquette with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.