Swerve Strickland Has Wanted To Be A Heavyweight For 15 Years, Discusses His Body Transformation

Swerve Strickland is always looking to take his game to the next level.

Coming off a big win over Adam ‘Hangman’ Page at AEW WrestleDream, The Mogul Embassy leader sat down with Grapsody (full interview above), during which he discussed a number of topics including his longtime desire to be a heavyweight wrestler. 

According to Swerve, he has been grinding in the gym, logging thousands of reps to get his body to a place it has never been before. 

“I mean, I wanted to be there for like, 15 years of my wrestling career, but that didn’t happen. I didn’t know about the ways of going about it, but like, I was like, ‘Okay, people are seeing my skills already there. What else can I improve on?’ You know me, every year, I always wanted to be like, ‘What are people saying I can’t do? What is something that’s missing? What’s something that’s holding me back?’ Then I started like, I got a personal trainer, finally, who’s really pushing me. I’m literally thousands of reps in the gym. Sometimes I’m doing sets of 10,  50, to 100 reps in between. So I’m literally hitting the 1000s of whatever workout, whatever movements we’re doing. So it was like a lot of sacrifices, sometimes be three hours in the gym, just going at it, I’m not finished until he says we’re done. Grinding and then eating at certain hours of the day. I’m really just pushing my body because I pushed everything else to the limit as far as I can do it,” he said.

Swerve continued on, saying that people are looking at him differently in the locker room, believing they have an even greater respect for the amount of work he puts into everything he does.

“So now like, Okay, I need to push the body to the next level. Now, people look at me [with] just a whole different energy. Now, there’s a different eye on me. Even just walking around the locker room, there’s a different eye on me, people approach me differently. There’s like a little bit more of a presence to myself now. It’s not necessarily I’m imposing. It’s just like, people just look at me with a different type of respect. Because I feel like they see the they know, they understand, and they know the type of discipline it takes to get your body to that. Knowing that I have it in order to do what I did physically. They look at me in a different respect. That’s before I even get in the ring. So, they’re like, ‘Oh, we know you hustle and grind with the podcast, and music, and the wrestling, and doing all these things that you’re doing all that stuff, but now your body’s improving, too. Oh man, okay, I got a different type of respect for you now,” Strickland said.

Swerve is set to face Bryan Danielson on the October 10 episode of AEW Dynamite, with the winner earning a TNT Championship opportunity. 

Swerve recently reflected on his time teaming with Keith Lee. You can find his full comments by clicking here.

He also spoke about some frustrating times he endured in NXT. Click here to learn more.