Finn Balor: I Want To Work On The Heel Aspect At The Raw And SmackDown Level

Finn Balor has largely been a babyface during his WWE main roster run with fans taking notice of how often he smiles unless he’s in the Demon persona.

Balor would like to show off more of an edge on the main roster, similar to how he was with the Bullet Club in New Japan.

“I really really want to work on the heel aspect of Finn at the Raw and SmackDown level. I’ve done a lot in Japan. We tried to do it in NXT, but it kind of went a different direction. I would really love to have a real heel run,” Balor said in an interview with Mark Andrews on My Love Letter to Wrestling.

Balor was a heel during his return to NXT in 2019, which eventually led to a second run as NXT Champion.

When asked if he feels he’s in the prime of his career, Balor said, “I think it’s yet to come. I feel I had gotten a little bit stale and I was just tired, exhausted, and kind of worn out by dealing with the politics in the office and the writers and everything that goes with it and I had enough. When I returned to NXT, I felt rejuvenated in the ring. One thing I feel that helped, and all the negative effects of the pandemic, taking the fans out of the equation and really wrestling makes you kind of change the cadence and the tempo of the match because you’re not trying to perform for a large audience, you’re literally performing in a one-on-one environment where you can work on the details of the match and not so reliant on hearing the audible response from the crowd. I would produce a match to get a ‘yay’ or ‘boo’ or ‘holy shit.’ When you take that element out, you can get back to the nuts and bolts of what I learned at Hammerlock and what I learned in Japan of just really wrestling. Despite all the negative things the pandemic brought up, it brought me that one positive thing to where I could get back to wrestling the way I like to wrestle. It’s now finding that balance of how can I keep that artform of the way I like to wrestling in front of big crowds when you’re on a limited timeframe with TV wrestling. It’s trying to find that balance that is the most difficult thing.”

Balor is currently part of the WWE Raw brand. He last wrestled on the January 17 episode of WWE Raw, losing to Austin Theory.

He has yet to declare for the WWE Royal Rumble. You can view the current list of participants by clicking here.

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