To an extent, pro wrestling is not a career you can work in forever. The performance aspect isn’t something the human body can do later in life, and not everyone lasts as a producer or backstage worker. Xavier Woods knows this, and he has a life plan.
Woods has built up a fair media empire with his UpUpDownDown channel, in addition to him having two bachelor’s degrees and a masters, so there’s definitely things to fall back on. During the most recent episode of The New Day’s Feel The Power podcast, Xavier revealed he’s been working on an exit plan ever since getting involved in professional wrestling. Having heard the horror stories of veterans who lost all their earnings, he didn’t want to be one of those casualties.
“Straight up, since I got into wrestling, I’ve been trying to figure out what my exit plan is. Just talking to veterans and hearing from them about that they may not have saved their money and they are now trying to figure out what the next chapter of their life looks like and they are nervous because wrestling is winding down and they don’t know what to do next.”
Woods revealed that D-Von Dudley gave him the advice to “be yourself” and has taken that to heart.
“Hearing so many stories like that, they definitely inspired our whole generation to want more than what we are frantically fighting for. We should want everything, not just this one thing. Props to them, especially guys like D-Von (Dudley), who led the way for me and told me to believe in myself and do what I feel I need to be doing.”
“Also, what I’m hoping this does is open the world to their eyes of entertainment or whatever somebody is into, that there is a group of people called professional wrestlers. We learn these incredible skills that nobody can learn anywhere else besides wrestling. Learning how to have a full three page script memorized five minutes before you walk out because somebody just handed it to you or knowing you have 10 minutes to do something when you get up there and you are almost done with it, they say now you have 17 minutes. Nobody can adapt to things like we can on this Earth. I’m hoping that I can go there, do a good job and hopefully people will like it and say, hey, there are other people with this skill set that we can pull from wrestling. I hope it opens doors for so many people in wrestling and people don’t want to just put us in a box anymore.”
Woods has managed to find himself in a position where he is building crossover appeal thanks to his YouTube channel. That kind of popularity has allowed him to even get a job hosting on G4 when the revival begins next year. Woods has managed to make moves to make sure that he finds himself in a comfortable position in the future for a life after pro wrestling.
h/t to Wrestling News for the quote
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