As noted, NXT Superstar Eric Young recently appeared as a guest on Edge and Christian's "Pod Of Awesomeness" for an in-depth interview on his career. Below are some additional highlights from what was discussed during the show.
On coming into the WWE system through NXT from Impact Wrestling: "It has been cool, man. It's like nothing but respect. Everyone treats us both great and coming in from the outside, you never know how that's kind of going to be and working on TV for 12 or 13 years, like, you're not sure how they're going to look at that. Yeah, they've been really awesome and it has been great. It's making me really like wrestling again."
On attempting to come through the WWE system in the OVW days but being too good for OVW and not enough for WWE at the time: "I think Ohio Valley had just opened, like it had just started, and we were hoping they would maybe send us there. I was working at a brass foundry in Cambridge [Ontario], like, living on a mattress on milk crates in the basement of this house I owned." Young continued, "and we were asking just to go there, pay us whatever and let us wrestle for a living and be there and [Laurinaitis] said to me and Bobby, the problem was we were TV ready and they were viewing OVW as a place where they would hire NFL players and bodybuilders and train them to learn their system. And there were a few guys that could work that there there, but I think they were more body-doubles for the guys that they wanted on TV to learn, so in a way we kind of dodged that bullet."
On Tye Dillinger: "We first met in Cambridge, Ontario. I had a wrestling school there and I had a wrestling school at the time because I wanted to have a ring to stay sharp because I was starting to do a lot of tryouts with the WWE, and dark matches, and stuff like that."
"I ended up having a bunch of really good students. Crazzy Steve from TNA is actually one of my students. He has done very well. Jake O'Reilly, a lot of guys in Ontario that are doing very well. And Tye was living in Cambridge, going to the fake Hart Brothers [school] in Cambridge and came in and said he was leaving there. He had only been there for a couple of months. There was no one there training, really. They kind of just took his money. You guys know the story of all that. So he said, 'I want to come to your gym' and he started coming to my school. And he was living with this girl at the time and they got into this big fight. He got kicked out, so he called me and said, 'hey man, can I come to your house?' So I went and picked him up. He lived in my room. He bought a futon and I put it in the corner of my room. Me and him lived in the same room for like a year while he was at my school."
On Tye Dillinger's Royal Rumble debut: "I was backstage at Royal Rumble when he was in the Rumble and [got] like this huge pop. It's cool kind of seeing everyone come around and congratulating him. I liken it to like he's my child. Not in that way, but in wrestling, I'm kind of his dad. It's like your kid going to Harvard, getting drafted to the NFL, or something. Yeah, it's cool. I almost cried in front of The Undertaker. I didn't, I didn't, but I almost did. I'm a pretty emotional person and that was pretty cool to see."
Check out the full episode of Edge and Christian's podcast featuring the Eric Young interview at Art19.com.