On the latest episode of WWE’s After The Bell Podcast With Corey Graves, Finn Balor talked about his current run as NXT Champion and described what his Road to WrestleMania looks like. After Edge won the Royal Rumble just a few weeks ago, Balor and Edge met face-to-face on NXT where Edge said he could choose to face Balor at WrestleMania 37. Balor talked about what he would like to see happen at WrestleMania this year and what the dream scenario would look like.
“For me personally, if I could defend the title one night on TakeOver and the next night on WrestleMania, that would be a dream scenario for me,” Balor said. “Double defense. I really feel, Karrion Kross, I empathize with him and his situation, having to relinquish the title being injured. I really feel like he deserves a title shot whether it’s at TakeOver or WrestleMania or sooner or later.”
Balor continued to speak about Edge showing up on NXT. He talked about his relationship with Edge and Christian over the years and how he admired the way they were able to stay retired and humble about it. Christian appeared in the Royal Rumble this year and Edge won the match after both were forced to retire prematurely.
“It was so cool,” Balor said. “Obviously I’ve hugely admired Edge, and Christian their whole careers as professionals. When I came to WWE and NXT, they had transitioned out into retirement and doing other things. I’d speak to them at length about how I admired how they gracefully transitioned out of wrestling to the next stage and the next chapter of their life. How they’ve done it with grace and respect and didn’t kind of dwell on the past, I’ve really admired how they’ve done that and expressed how I’d hoped I could have the same class and dignity to do that when it’s my time.
“I had really no idea or expectation that I would be in the ring with either of these guys at any time in my career. Having that in ring respect and life respect for Edge and being able to share that moment in NXT was pretty mind blowing for Finn as a human outside of wrestling.”
Balor discussed the reaction he received from friends and family about the Edge interaction. He said he didn’t really realize how big of a moment it was until friends were texting him asking him about Edge.
“We get so caught up in what we’re doing, you don’t really understand what you’re doing at the time until you look back a couple months later, sometimes a couple years later and go wow, that was a really cool night,” Balor said. “When it happened on that Wednesday night, I thought wow this is cool but I’d come so used to being around Edge, in the locker room or backstage at events, I was accustomed to being around him and you kind of forget that the interaction you had was on T.V.
“One thing that I know was the next day I was getting texts from my buddies at home in Ireland that never text me about wrestling and the Thursday morning there all texting me going ‘What’s Edge like? Is he cool?’ That’s something that’s on a different level because my real friends from home are texting me about this guy. That’s when I knew it was a different level.”
