Xavier Woods Explains His Love Of Hockey, Reflects On Meeting Wayne Gretzky

Few things in sports are as intense and dramatic as playoff hockey, and Xavier Woods agrees.

WrestleMania season in WWE means everyone is upping their game as every superstar wants to compete on the biggest show of the year. Xavier Woods has compared WrestleMania season to playoff hockey before diving into how he fell in love with hockey. 

“I recently got into hockey, like a year or two ago, but I got into it because my friend showed me playoff hockey. I said, ‘Ohhhh. I like this!’ I went to the All Star game and I was ready for it, and they weren’t playing like that. Oh, it’s because they’re getting ready for the (Stanley) Cup. WrestleMania is our Cup,” Woods said in an interview with Review STL. “This was, I want to say, two years ago. They’re watching a game, they’re explaining it to me, and then I saw somebody get checked into a wall. Four seconds later, I saw somebody get punched in the mouth. ‘Hold on, this is the Finals, right?’ ‘No, this is Game 1 of the playoffs.’ I almost fainted. ‘I love this.’ Everyone wants to win. They’re talking about how some people were on teams as kids back in the day together, some people are brothers. This is incredible. Hats off to all the incredible hockey players out there. Just watching it, that’s a skill, to be able to do all that on ice.”

Woods was part of the 2020 NHL All Star game, where he met Wayne Gretzky. 

“We’re sitting there watching the game in a box. A guy goes, ‘do you want to meet him?’ ‘Who?’ ‘The Great One.’ ‘The Rock is here?’ ‘Not The Rock, Wayne.’ ‘Wayne Gretzky?’ ‘Yeah, he’s over there.’ I jumped up out of my seat and ran over there. ‘Blessings on blessings.’ Told him I was a wrestler and he just talked to me for like 30 minutes. It was really surreal,” he said.

Woods is a fan of the Tampa Bay Lightning, who have won two of the last three Stanley Cups. 

They lost in the 2022 Stanley Cup Finals to the Colorado Avalanche. 

Elsewhere during the interview, Woods reflected on his NXT experience with Kofi Kingston. You can find his full comments by clicking here. 

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