Robert Stone Recalls Juggling Wrestling And Teaching During His TNA Run

Robert Stone recalls how he would juggle wrestling and teaching during his TNA run, with his school encouraging him to stick with wrestling.

During Stone’s in ring career, a large part of that would be with TNA wrestling, where he would wrestle under the ring name ‘Robbie E’ and would include several title wins, including an X-Division Championship victory.

While speaking to Pro Wrestling Illustrated in a recent interview, Robert Stone spoke about juggling wrestling and his teaching job, revealing how his school encouraged him to continue wrestling when he attempted to resign after signing with TNA.

“I finished school. I independent wrestled all throughout college. I got my degree. I got hired as a school teacher in a town over from where I grew up, high school phys ed and health, and then going into my second year of teaching, I had a tryout with TNA Wrestling and I got offered a contract. So, needless to say, at the time, the money was way less than what I was making teaching. But, you know, I had worked almost 10 years at this point in wrestling. I wasn’t going to give up the opportunity. I attempted to resign from school teaching that second year. But they encouraged me to stay, and they said, ‘whenever you can’t be here because of wrestling, that’s okay.’  I was like, ‘you’re sure? Like, we have live TV every week. I’m going to miss a lot of days.’ They encouraged me to stay, which was great because I was getting a teacher’s salary at the same time as getting money for my first wrestling contract. So it was a great way to start being a full-time wrestler. But I would be on live TV on a Thursday night on TNA, fly home Friday morning, get someone to cover my first period and come into school the next day still with hair gel in my hair. I brought, I won the X Division championship and I brought it in. Like all the students would watch me on Thursday night and then see me in school on Friday. They were fist pumping in the hallways. It was a wild time because you know, I’m on Spike TV, live TV every Thursday, and then I’m in school during the week. It was like, so for them, it was cool. Like, think about it, your teacher, like we’re watching them on TV every Thursday night. So it was very cool. But now, years later, yeah, once in a while, I have on Instagram or X, someone reaches out.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Robert Stone spoke about his belief that Kendal Grey and Kelani Jordan will one day main event WrestleMania. You can read more about that here.

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