Professional lacrosse isn't very lucrative.

I've learned so much whether it was, I played a lot of team sports, so being part of a team, learning how to be a leader on different teams, and how to deal with the ebb and flow of different games.

I have grown so much since I started in this league and it's something that I feel that every single year I'm always learning, always growing.

Getting cut four separate times really never stopped me.

I definitely was inspired by drama teachers in high school named Mr. Walsh and Ms. O'Neil, and both of them were very formative in helping me sort of understand theater. But I think my biggest inspiration is that I was a high school drama teacher in real life for four years in the Bronx.

I'm motivated to keep going to keep making a difference in people's lives.

On May 29 2016, my wildest dreams came true. I became the WBC cruiserweight champion of the world at Goodison Park. The dream location, the dream title, the dream ending, a third-round knockout of Iunga Makabu.

If you look at who emerged on the horizon 12 to 18 months after ECW stopped running shows, I think it's very reasonable to believe that we would have picked up CM Punk and several of the other young stars that emerged in the independent scene in the early part of that decade. Punk obviously is the one that I would hope I would have noticed.