Mattel has recently released a new line of action figures from WWE‘s “New Generation” era. One of the company’s biggest stars of that era was Kevin Nash’s Diesel character. Nash recently spoke to Sports Illustrated about what his time as Diesel meant for his career.

“That was only three years of my life. It seemed like so much more,” Nash said. “I came from basically nowhere. There were so many times during my first run in WCW that I was going to leave and go back to the bar scene. It didn’t seem like it was going anywhere, until I came to WWE.”

Diesel held the WWF Championship from November 26th, 1994 until November 19th, 1995.

“People don’t realize that during my run in WWE as champion, not only was I green and I barely had 300 matches, but my mom died almost 30 days to the date of being crowned champion,” said Nash. “I was dealing with that on top of everything else.”

“I just remember soldiering on. I buried my mom and went to Winnipeg and worked. That’s kind of the way it was.”

Nash is a 2x WWE Hall of Fame inductee. He was first inducted in 2015 as a singles star. He went in under his real name rather than as Diesel, however. Nash was then inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame a second time when he went in as part of the New World Order.