Scott D’Amore Describes His WWE Performance Center Experience

Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling owner and former TNA President Scott D’Amore spoke with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp on a number of topics, including his experience visiting the WWE Performance Center late last year.

D’Amore said, “That one was different actually. I also went to the Jaguars game that week too. I guess I was less recognizable at the Jaguars game than I was at the PC. At my heart, I’m a coach and I’m a teacher and I want to help teach people. I want to help encourage and nurture and help develop talent. I always say my adventures in Anthem, my adventures in TNA Impact Wrestling, I could title the book, ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the PC.’ Because when I stopped in the Impact office for the first time in 2017, before I’d even really joined -— when Jeff Jarrett was running things —- I was actually on the way down to Florida like I usually am to in February for my mother’s birthday. Jeff Jarrett convinced me to stop in Nashville and I stopped in Nashville for a couple days and he convinced me to come back a couple of weeks later. I messaged out and reached out to people at the PC and said, ‘Hey, just so you know, I’m at the Impact offices. I don’t want anything to get out and you to think there’s anything up.’ They had said, ‘Are you working there now?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t know where this is gonna lead.’ They said, ‘Well, when you finish up, let us know and then come down,’ right? So I already had a prearranged tour and everything set up there at the PC at that time. Because I thought the engagement, it was a consulting gig. I thought it was going to last, maybe a month at the tops two months and it went on for seven years. I finally got a chance to go down and see the WWE PC.”

On the PC:

“It’s a cool place. I mean, the Capitol Center where they shoot out of it’s great how they maximize the space. It’s not large, but it looks so good. The training facilities, Eric Young had told me years ago about it. He said, ‘Coach, it’s everything you think a wrestling school looks like until you show up at a barn or an abandoned building where the wrestling school actually is.’ That’s completely accurate. When you look at it, they’ve got training rings and high spot rings and they’ve got. They’ve got like two full gyms it seemed like they have, they have the trainers and everybody on staff to manage and maintain your physical wellbeing and your health. Literally it’s wrestler’s nirvana. Like if you’re going to learn how to be a wrestler, like this is the environment that we probably all dreamed about being in and it’s getting closer to the experience that athletes in other sports experience when they’re when they’re elite athletes in training to hopefully succeed in their field. So it was just an opportunity to go down there and tour it and visit some friends and it was a great experience. I was really impressed with what they have down there.”

You can check out D’Amore’s comments in the video below.

(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)