O’Shay Edwards Talks Training At The ROH Dojo, Progression of African-Americans In Wrestling
Ring of Honor’s O’Shay Edwards spoke with Andrew Thompson of POST Wrestling and Fightful was sent highlights of the interview, which can be seen below.
The full interview can be seen at this link and in the video at the top of the page.
Being trained by Robert Gibson/Being a part of the ROH dojo: I’m five years in going on six pretty soon — from Atlanta, Georgia, trained by Robert Gibson. People say that. People say, ‘Oh snap!’ Yeah, Rock ‘n’ Roll Express. So, when I moved up here from Atlanta, he was just like, ‘Hey man, just don’t embarrass me’, and I was like, ‘Alright, we’ll see what we can do.’ But I came up here through the DMV or I call it the Grapitol region because I’m in the Ring of Honor developmental system. So I train there with Ring of Honor. From time to time I get to travel with them and then I do a lot of Future of Honor shows as they pop up. But, I’m here now. I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon and if somebody’s got something to say differently, well, I’m 6’3, 280 pounds. I ain’t a hard man to find.”
Progression of African-Americans in wrestling: “Right, things have improved but we still got a long way to go. I’m an advocate for representation matters. Not so much for what people will think that we are. Not so much what people want to assume that we are. I am who I am. The fact that I’m black, well, that’s here nor there. A lot of people say ‘For the culture’ and all that good stuff and that’s great, but I’m always just — I am who I am. For the culture is great, but at the end of the day, I want to leave this business better than what I found it. So regardless of who I am to some people, my blackness doesn’t define me when I step into that ring because at the end of the day, you don’t see the fact that I’m black, you see that I’m a wrestler and then on top of that, you put in the fact that I’m a damn good wrestler on that. It’s just really one of those things where it’s like, ‘Oh okay. He’s good. He just so happens to be black.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, see me for who I am, not for what you see.’”
Shooting his shot by doing the Shawn Spears/Tully Blanchard social media challenge: “Last time I checked, it’s like 4,700 so, out of 4,700, you only need one. That was fun, I enjoyed doing it. It’s one of those where as corny as it’s gonna sound, like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play. So, you shoot your shot. Let’s see how close I can get. Some people get to shoot a layup, some people get to throw a free throw, some of us got to shoot three pointers, some of us gotta go half court and well, some of us gotta shoot from the other side of the court but as long as you’re on the court, you still got a shot. So it was one of those [things] where I could sit here all day long and think about it, or I was like, ‘Hey screw it. Give me 30 seconds. I can say a lot in 30 seconds.’”
