Selfishly, it feels great for me to do something that might put a smile on someone else's face.Collection: Smile
I don't know if it's a male thing, but a lot of our emotions end up manifesting themselves in the form of anger.Collection: Anger
The more work you put in, and the more you constantly and consistently give good performances against good opponents and constantly exceed people's expectations, the more you really endear yourself to the crowd. That's how your career takes off - it's just consistency and time.Collection: Work
The thing, in general, about being a good person is just do the right thing as often as possible.
Everyone's the hero in their own story. You've lived your life. You're the good guy of your life, the protagonist of your own movie. Everyone knows that they have more in them to offer than they sometimes show.
As a kid growing up in Montreal, I wanted to become either a hockey player or a wrestler. Since my family didn't have a lot of money, my parents never put me in a hockey league because it was so expensive.
Man, it feels great to do anything that might brighten someone else's day.
I was born in Canada, but both my parents are Syrian - they moved to Canada in the '70s, and I was born in a 100-percent-Arab house.
I belong in the ring.
I want to leave a legacy behind that is undeniable.
If there's a cause you believe in, go out there, get active, and do it.
It's just so weird how you get so used to what we do: I could go in there and wrestle main events on Live Events for 25-30 minutes, but I couldn't really get the sheets off me in bed. It's weird how that works. Your body just adapts.
The Hardys were a huge influence on me becoming a wrestler. Not so much the moves themselves, but the concepts behind the moves: trying to be innovative and just being exciting.
I don't ever want to be boring.
Sitting on the sidelines is so painful because it's very difficult for me to watch wrestling and not be a participant in the ring, since that's just where I belong.
I want to do something that has never been done, and that's become the first two-time NXT Champion. In a sense, that's a strange distinction to want, but that has to be my goal while I'm in NXT.
A lot of people think I reacted a little too emotionally when I said, 'If I can't beat Adrian Neville, I'm done.' But the truth is, my whole life, I've always followed my heart and my emotions.
When I signed with WWE, a lot of people, even close friends, told me that this place was going to chew me up and spit me out, just because of the way my personality is. It's been an adjustment for me as a human being.
I'm an idealist. You do things your way well enough, for long enough, you'll get rewarded.
It's a slow process, getting hired by WWE. First, you get noticed; you're on their radar. Then you come for a tryout. Then you wait to hear back. There's the physical. It's a very long process.
Feeling stupid is a terrible feeling.
I don't think it really serves to make the world a better place, when you're only concerned about yourself.
I am very privileged. I have everything I want and more.
It's definitely a sensitive topic to discuss, but I have felt, since I signed with the WWE, I was in a unique position to reestablish how Arabs were perceived in the WWE and western media.
Ever since I was a kid and growing up and watching things like the 'Naked Gun' movies, there was always this stereotype about how Arabs were perceived and portrayed. I've never watched those Arab villains in the movie and felt like that was me.
I think it's important for youngsters from all walks of life to have some sort of representative that they can look up to and aspire to be and let them know there's a chance for anybody from any background.
That's the spirit of America, right? Anybody from any background can make it anywhere with enough hard work.
I'm very proud that I can be myself. I'm not trying to be Arabic, I'm just being me, and I happen to be Arabic. I think that might be refreshing to some people, and it's a bit more realistic than these pantomime villains we've seen before.
If you work really hard at something for a really, really long time, you do it well. Eventually, somebody will notice.
I'm very much an Arab, although I need to practise my Arabic more.
Sometimes you have to say what's on your mind if it's something that's really important to you.
I don't want to tell fans what to think or what to believe or whatever, but at the same time, some things just hit you very personally.
You have to stand by your beliefs.
Not every magical moment in your career is going to happen on the biggest stage of the year.
I was always a wrestling fan, and being an Arab kid who grew up in Canada, there was no representation for people like me.
I think fans always felt that I try real hard and I am passionate about what I do.
When I was a teenager, a friend of mine got a job on a wrestling radio show in Montreal, and he found a local professional wrestler who was able to train us.
I have always loved wrestling and grew up watching it - my earliest memories include watching Hulk Hogan.
I always wanted to be a wrestler when I grew up.
I hate the word 'annoying!'
I have no pokerface.
I'm bad at fishing for information.
The heel I want to be is real mouthy, which is fine, but I want to be a guy that can be taken seriously to win the world title.
I just want to win the world title; I don't want to be a guy that Vince McMahon looks at and says, 'Never. We can't.'
Neville and I are big fans of ska. He's actually more into original, Jamaican, skinhead, two-tone ska from England, but I'm more into punk ska - Operation Ivy and stuff Rancid would do.
The game has changed since the '80s, where you could punch and kick and headlock and do one suplex, and that's a 25 minute match.
The Full Sail crowd, it's a pretty unique and a pretty distinct environment. It's very close quarters and a bit more of what I'm used to from my days on the independents. But the truth is, I sometimes think that it's harder to win over a small crowd sometimes than it is to win over a big crowd.
A crowd's a crowd, and to me, it's not so much about the size as much it is the energy we're getting.
I've worked in front of crowds of two hundred that sounded like a thousand, and I've worked in front of crowds of five thousand that sounded like two hundred. It really varies with the energy level with any given crowd on any given night.
I do feel, in a lot of ways, that I'm living proof that anything is possible.