Speedball Mike Bailey: You Shouldn’t Tell Kids Becoming A Wrestler Is Gonna Happen, Because Statistically, It Isn’t

Speedball Mike Bailey talks about how people in his life would react to him wanting to become a professional wrestler.

Many young wrestling fans dream about becoming pro wrestlers, with some taking the initiative and launching their careers from a young age, with those being the ones who tend to make it where childhood fans are concerned. For Speedball, he feels like it isn’t realistic to tell all kids that they will make it if they want to.

While speaking to TMZ Sports in a new interview, Speedball Mike Bailey spoke about how people in his life would react when he told them he wanted to become a pro wrestler.

“I mean, my mom was kind of passive about it. She was like, ‘yeah, sure. Okay. Do whatever you want,’ you know, kind of just assuming that it wouldn’t work out, which is pretty much what I told teachers at school or as I started getting older and telling everyone the same thing was kind of like, ‘yeah, okay, you can try, but it’s not going to happen.’ Because I remember when we did like at school and the teachers asking us what we wanted to do when we were older, so many people said, ‘oh, I’m going to play in the NHL,’ and then I said, I’m going to be a professional wrestler, and the overwhelming response was, ‘yeah, that’s not going to happen,’ which is absolutely the correct answer. You shouldn’t tell kids, ‘yeah, you want to become a professional wrestler? Sure, that’s going to happen’ because statistically it isn’t, and when I said it at the time, there was no one like me or close to me that was working as a professional wrestler, and even when I started, even when I was 15 years old and I started wrestling in 2005, there was no one on television that looked like me. Luckily from Quebec, we had guys like Kevin Steen and El Generico who had just started doing independent wrestling as a career, traveling the world, selling merch and making a living at it. But that was brand new at the time, and, you know, shortly after that, we saw guys like the Young Bucks and guys like Kenny Omega who packed up and just went to Japan and were able to make a living there, and, you know, slowly over the years, it became possible to have a career as a wrestler outside of, you know, the one company that was on TV at the time.”

Elsewhere in his recent vlog, Speedball spoke about AEW Redemption and how bummed he was that he hasn’t gotten onto the card yet. You can read more about that here.

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