Eddie Kingston talks about nearly quitting wrestling and WWE opportunity
During an interview with the New York Post, Eddie Kingston revealed that he came close to ending his wrestling career on several occasions before he received his well deserved AEW contract.
Eddie Kingston is a veteran, who has been in the profession, specifically in the indies for over 18 years. Along the way, the Mad King had numerous stints with Ring of Honor, TNA, and mainly Chikara. However, he came close to calling it quits.
Eddie Kingston recalls how he nearly halted his career in 2019. He chose to continue so that his nephew and niece would have something they could be proud of their uncle for.
"I believe God sent my niece and nephew to me not to stop wrestling because he knew good things were gonna happen"
This, however, was not the only time Eddie Kingston almost retired, as he nearly had to move back in with his parents once the COVID pandemic hit in March. Kingston, who was working for the National Wrestling Alliance at the time, had to rush back home from gigs in Europe due to working constrictions. This ultimately forced him to sell his wrestling gear to pay his mortgage due to the lack of work outside of WWE and AEW.
"I think probably another month I would have sold the house and moved back to New York and back to my parents’ place until I could get a regular job and, you know, get my own apartment."
Eddie Kingston turned down two opportunities from the WWE
Eddie Kingston also revealed that WWE had been attempting to hire him for years as a coach, but he turned down the opportunity as he was still passionate about being an in-ring competitor.
During an appearance on Talk Is Jericho, Eddie Kingston revealed that the company had called him once about the coaching opportunity and again after his AEW debut to discuss additional roles he could play.
"I get a call from the competition. To be honest, to them, they were trying to get me to coach for years. But my thing was, and I told them, I can’t collect a paycheck if I didn’t earn it. And they were like, ‘What do you mean?’ And my thing was I was gonna go in there, coach, be bitter and angry about coaching, not getting a shot and these guys who don’t, they love wrestling now because they’re at the Performance Center, no offense to them, but when you’re on the road getting paid hot dogs and soda, but I would have been so bitter and angry, I wouldn’t have done a good job and I would have been detrimental to those kids so I was like, nah I’m good.So anyway, now they were talking about other things besides coaching and, yeah, I had to weigh my options. And I came here and I told a couple people, ‘Hey look, the competition hit me up, just letting you know. I’m not begging for a job, just letting you know. It’s very hard for me to play this supposed wrestling game…. Yeah, man I just said that to them. Next thing you know, Christopher Daniels just goes, ‘Hey here’s a contract."
Fortunately, for the wrestling world, Eddie Kingston chose not to retire. Instead, he was the recipient of some good fortune when he received the aforementioned contract from AEW. Hopefully, we will continue to see him do some great things on TNT for a long time.