Nic Nemeth says he had a lot of nerves before his 30-minute draw with Josh Alexander on TNA Impact. Nemeth battled Alexander to a draw at the TNA Impact tapings, which aired two weeks ago and set up an Iron Man match between the two for TNA Emergence. Nemeth spoke with Fightful for a new interview and talked about working the lengthy match and more. You can see a couple of highlights below:
On working a much longer match than the ones he worked in WWE: “I think so, yeah. Televised. I’m trying to think there’s a couple half Ironmans. Like that Survivor Series was like an hour, but I wasn’t in there the whole time. There was other guys and everything. So this will be a full on hour and someone like me who maybe two, three, five years ago was like, I could do two hours if you wanted. The last year or two in New York, I was only having three and four minute matches. So no matter how much cardio I did, if I got six or eight minutes on TV, great. But no matter how much cardio you do and what you’re doing, it’s not the same as ring time. So I was actually pretty nervous last week when it ended up being a 30 minute draw. I go, ‘Man, I hope I can still go. I talked a bunch of trash.’ I’m in the best shape of my life. I work out every single day no matter what. I go, ‘I hope I still got it,’ and at the end of that one, I went, ‘Okay, I’m good.’ I was nervous because I was in a bubble for 20 years and I wanted to see, can I go with people outside of that bubble? Can I make things happen? Can I be as good as the trash I talked? So far, yes.”
On Josh Alexander: “Josh is someone who, when I famously didn’t watch wrestling for a little while because I hated what I was doing, as I started to come to TNA and do independents, I picked up on what he was doing and that is like his thing is being an Ironman, non-stop buzzsaw guy that can go and I go this is a hell of a challenge I really am looking forward to this because it really goes to show, it’s not ‘Can I hang?’ This is ‘Can I get an A++ in the Ironman match and the first one I’m really doing?’ So it’s a lot of pressure, but I love it and I live for it and he is not gonna let up and I look forward to that very much.”