Lio Rush Recalls Rough Time In WWE, Xavier Woods Reaching Out

Lio Rush had an up-and-down time in WWE, with his on-screen success not matching up to what was always happening behind the scenes. 

Rush reportedly had backstage heat during his time in WWE, which led to an absence following WrestleMania 35. 

Speaking to Renee Paquette on Oral Sessions, Rush reflected on how he was feeling during his time with WWE and what went wrong. 

“I don’t like to complain about a lot. I’m the kind of person where if I don’t agree with something or don’t go with something, I’m just like, ‘Fuck it, whatever.’ I don’t care to put that much energy into it. It came down to a point where, in wrestling, I think I got a lot thrown at me very quickly and the only thing I knew how to do was adapt and adjust who I was and what I was used to, to try and fit in that space that I was in. I don’t think a lot of people agreed with that. I think I had a lot of anger and resentment in me early in my career. I didn’t really understand why people felt certain ways and it’s okay to feel a certain way because I understand that this is a hard business and sometimes you have guys that spend 10-15 years putting everything into it and they don’t get out what they put in. I get it. It hurts, it sucks. Someone like me, and I’m not the only one, you see guys that get signed or get pushed in a way and you wish it was you or you wish you had that kind of momentum. I just had a lot thrown at me pretty quickly and politics played a huge role. I had a lot of people try to tear me down and had a lot of people try to get ahead of the curve,” he said.

Rush continued, discussing how people got the wrong perception of him based on his attitude. 

“I think a lot of people thought that I was super cocky,” he said. “That, honestly, hurt me to my core. It sucks when that’s the stigma about you. Me, I’m a very driven person. I’m very driven, very confident in my abilities, and I know what I’m capable of, as everyone else does. A lot of people thought I was cocky, which wasn’t the case at all. I just believed in myself so much. I’m a self-motivated kind of person and I like speaking things into existence and I like saying I’m going to do something and then doing it. Not for anyone else, but for me. A lot of people don’t take into account that there are such things as an introvert and extroverted people within wrestling. I went there and had other things to think about. It’s not like I was going to work to try to make friends. Friends are great, but it’s not my number one priority. I was in a very unfortunate, hard position, and I can see why things went the way they did for me. At the same time, it does suck.”

When asked if he spoke to anyone in WWE about how he was feeling, Rush said, “I remember, I could be slightly wrong, but the two instances I remember; one was Bobby because I was working with him every week and we would talk all the time. He knew me better than anybody did. He knew what kind of person I was, he knew my values, my morals and everything like that. One person I didn’t talk to that much, who saw me from afar and expressed being a fan of me, was Xavier Woods. He pulled me into a room, he was talking to me, and he just wanted to know what I was thinking, how I was as a person, and how I can maybe better assist people warming up to me in a way. It’s so cool he did that. It was real. It was genuine. We weren’t talking about wrestling. It was just, ‘How are you?’ The overall aura of backstage WWE is a little difficult, for me, at least, especially when you want to be the absolute best and you just want to work and make a name for yourself.”

Renee commented that Woods checking on Lio was a “Woods thing to do.” ​​​​​​​

Lio returned to WWE television in September 2019, joining the NXT brand. He would win the NXT Cruiserweight Championship before being released by WWE in April 2020. 

Elsewhere during the podcast, Lio discussed his relationship with Tony Khan now that he’s working in AEW. You can find his full comments by clicking here. 

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