Former WWE Superstar Ariya Daivari recently made an appearance on an episode of Renee Paquette's Oral Sessions podcast, where he talked about how he can not wait and how excited he is for his non-compete clause with the WWE to expire.
Ariya Daivari said:
“I’m literally counting down the days.” “I’m starting to get all my bookings figured out, and I can start talking to other companies a little bit more seriously. So yes, I cannot wait till the 23rd.”
Ariya Daivari also talked about how the WWE 205 Live brand gave him an opportunity as well as a place to wrestle and show what he can do, but being in the show also limited him to being a Cruiserweight.
Ariya Daivari said:
“It’s kind of twofold.” “For one, the Cruiserweight Division obviously gave smaller guys like me an opportunity to work in WWE. My entire life I always said ‘I’m going to work for WWE. I’m going to wrestle there, I know I will.’ But in the back of my head you go ‘you’re also 5’10. An average WWE wrestler were these giant hosses of men.’ So that was the only thing that was like ‘that may be the only roadblock I have.’ So when they came up with this Cruiserweight Classic and they said ‘hey we’re going to give another run at the Cruiserweight Division’, I was really grateful for that.”
“So that was really cool. Now on the other side of the token, I just know in the history of how WWE does things that once you have that Cruiserweight stamp on you, it might be like swimming upstream the entire time. Because at the end of the day it’s still Vince McMahon’s show and he still likes big giant dudes and stuff like that. So that was the only thing. I was happy it created an opportunity for me to finally wrestle in the WWE but I also know that I didn’t want to be labeled a Cruiserweight. When I was an independent wrestler for ten years, I was never a Cruiserweight, I was never a Lightweight. Because independent wrestling is all shapes and sizes. It doesn’t matter.”
Ariya Daivari then talked about how being a WWE wrestler is a really hard job and that if you are not dedicated and passionate about it, then it will not work out for you, but despite him having that WWE passion and dedication, they sometimes use it against you.
Ariya Daivari said:
“The other thing too is it always kind of bothered me when WWE looked as this size thing.” “Being a WWE wrestler is a really hard job. If you’re not dedicated to pro wrestling, if you haven’t dedicated your life to the craft of pro wrestling, I don’t think it’s going to work out for you. A lot of the guys who were on 205, me, Ali, Gulak, Lince, Tony, like we’re all really dedicated to pro wrestling. We love pro wrestling, and we took it very seriously when we were on the independent scene. So it was always kind of weird to me because WWE should want that. You should want guys that are like ‘I’m here for this business, I’m willing to die for this business.’”
“WWE should be like ‘hell yeah, these are the guys we want on our team.’ But they use, sometimes they’ll use your love and passion of pro wrestling against you a little bit. It was always kind of weird to me that said ‘you should want a roster of guys who absolutely love professional wrestling and they care about it. And they took it upon themselves to learn the road before they got to WWE.’ So it’s kind of weird to me sometimes, those guys are like ‘eh we don’t want to go with those guys. We want to go with this football player who, this was his second choice. Football was his first love, wrestling is his backup choice.'”