Heath Slater On AJ Styles Beating Jinder Mahal For WWE Championship, His New Wrestling School
WWE superstar Heath Slater was a guest on today's edition of the Wrestling Inc. Podcast with Glenn Rubenstein and WrestlingInc.com owner Raj Giri. The former tag team champion discussed his career and also gave details on his new wrestling school.
In a shocker of a main event, Slater's former 3MB stablemate Jinder Mahal lost his WWE Championship to AJ Styles, ending his six-month reign. Slater, who just returned home from the U.K. tour, said he's proud of Mahal for holding the title for so long, but he admitted he was also disappointed because he wishes he had a longer run with the belt.
"I didn't see it, but I heard about it," Slater said. "And I mean, WWE Champion for six months, heck yeah! I mean, why not? And he lost to 'The Phenomenal One' and as you know, AJ's great and I'm sure it was an awesome match and I will watch it. But yeah, it was a damn shame because I was hoping he would go for a year with it."
The decision to have a world title change hands on SmackDown was surprising to most fans. The last time someone won a world title on SmackDown was 2003, when Brock Lesnar defeated Kurt Angle. Slater said he wasn't surprised in the slightest because it's just the nature of the WWE.
"Nothing surprises me anymore if you want me to be honest," he said. "It's one of those things where I'm sure the world was surprised and happy, because Jinder is a great heel. Anything can happen in the WWE that's just how it is, that's what makes it fun and spontaneous and unpredictable. You just never know."
Slater is in the process of opening his own wrestling school, Face 2 Face Wrestling, in Atlanta, Georgia. He said owning his own school had been a dream of his from the moment he started the path towards a wrestling career.
"Every wrestler always has the idea of wanting to have his own school," Slater said. "So pretty much it just came to me when I first walked into the first school I went to. Getting to learn the basics, seeing how it's run, and then it's one of those things where you just want one yourself one day. That's how it happened with me, I always wanted one, that's what it is. I've always wanted one and know I've got one, so I'm happy."
Slater said he expects to have a solid number of kids to train by early next year. He's hoping to continue to generate interest in the school but he knows that as with most things, it's a process.
"Right now we have kids coming in at the end of November, December, and then like four signing up next year. So right now we have six in there, doing their thing, but we should have around 12 or 13 by the start of next year, something like that. So it's going, but I mean it always starts out slow," Slater said. "You gotta it noticed and have people hear about it and when they hear about it, they get interested and when they get interested, they might want to do it. So it's just one of those things."
You can get details about Slater's wrestling school at face2facewrestling.com. Slater also discussed thinking he was going to be fired when they were called in about the Nexus angle, who would be on his Mount Rushmore of wrestling, who came us with "Pelvis Wesley" in Southpaw, how Southpaw happened, being moved to RAW and more. You can check out the full interview in the video above.