Rohit Raju found success in IMPACT Wrestling by working hard and credits TJP for helping him in recent years.
Rohit Raju will be a part of the X-Division Championship Ultimate X Match at Slammiversary. He has been with the promotion since 2018 and has had the pleasure of being X-Division Champion in the past.
Ahead of his championship match, he is reflecting on his run as champion and the amount of success he has been afforded in the company.
Speaking with Liam Alexander-Stewart of Inside The Ropes, Rohit expressed that he didn't have too many helping hands when he first came to the company but now says TJP has helped him in recent years and feels that he has improved over the years by working with names like Josh Alexander.
"No, when I first got there. I was pretty much on my own. I buddy buddied up with Fallah real quick, just because I knew him from when I had, like a trial match in 2017 and we became really good friends. But other than that, I didn't know anybody there. I didn't have any indie buds because it wasn't indie darling or anything of that nature. I was a guy that had won the gut check and that I don't know if that was frowned upon or not and no one ever told me. But I have been busting my butt for years. So no one really took me under their wing when I first got there.
"TJP helped me out a lot in the last year or two, honestly, is his help, his experience, his knowledge, his guidance has been tremendous. Being in the ring with him. It's helped me out a lot it's helped my confidence. It's helped my in-ring work. I have grown as a performer, and so I credit a good chunk of my confidence to battling him over the past year, guys like Josh Alexander and Ethan Page, when they got there, would definitely sit back and watch my stuff and give me some really great critiques and advice. But as far as when I first got there, nobody, nobody it was I was pretty much by myself and just really trying to prove myself.
"There was there were guys that would watch my stuff here and there and they gave me some really good feedback. When Eli Drake was there. I talked to him about promos and we go over some stuff. But other than that to it's under their weight. I did enjoy listening to Gama though I enjoyed listening to Gama's Stories, his history. That was something I always loved with him was him just telling stories and then giving like Don Callis a hard time because Don was pretty much a young boy when Gama was the man. So it was funny and also was great to see the respect that Don still had for Gama."
Rohit Raju credits his work ethic for the level of success he had reached, saying that there were those who responded negatively to his new success.
"I think I had to stay working hard. A lot of it came down to confidence and then there came a point in time where I was like, I don't care anymore. Like, I'm not going to sweat what somebody else thinks of me and I just started going off the walls and just really working and feeling good during and wasn't caring about, you know, because there is a long point time. I don't think they have anything for me in the cards at all and I was getting frustrated. But you don't show that stuff backstage you don't whine, you don't cry, you just suck it up and you go do what you got to do and that's what I've always done. I've always tried to do it to the best of my ability.
"I feel like a lot of people when I finally started to find success, a lot of people hated it because they don't want you to, you know, once you become more than what they expect you to be, they don't like that a lot of times and everyone expected me to be this low bottom-of-the-barrel guy. jobber guy, because that's what I was portrayed as. If I knew my worth, I knew I was way better than what people gave me credit for, even what the company gave me credit for at that time. So as soon as they gave me the ball. I took the ball and I ran with it and I wasn't going to let go of that ball any time soon. So I did feel like I had to claw and scratch. I was never anybody's pet project. I was never anything of that nature."
Fightful will have live coverage of IMPACT Wrestling Slammiversary Saturday, July 17, 2021.
