Matt Riddle Talks Earning Respect From Wrestling Fans

One of NXT’s newest and brightest stars, Matt Riddle, was a guest on Edge and Christian’s “Pod of Awesomeness” this week. The 32-year-old spoke on having to earn over the respect of fans at EVOLVE and other independent wrestling events early in his wrestling career.

At first, Riddle said, the fans taunted him for coming from an MMA background.

“I remember my first match for EVOLVE, at EVOLVE 49, when I came out, the crowd chanted ‘Baby Lesnar’,” Riddle said. “And then the next night in Long Island the crowd chanted ‘You Can’t Wrestle.'”

Over time, however, Riddle won over the respect of not only fans of EVOLVE but fans from all over the independent scene.

“So I wrestled all over and by the time I got back to where they said I couldn’t wrestle, all they kept chanting was ‘Bro.'”

Matt Riddle will be wrestling on a WWE house show in Madison Square Garden on December 26th. Several members of the NXT roster are in a multi-person tag-team match on the show.

Riddle recently Tweeted out, “Wow I just can’t stop! If you haven’t heard my year isn’t over and I get to wrestle in the Legendary MSG in NYC on the RAW brand, which makes this my biggest DeButt of 2018 and it’s gonna be the DeButts of all DeButts!”