Finn Balor Talks Staying with NXT, Paul Heyman and More in Exclusive Interview

There's nothing developmental about Finn Balor.

During a recent interview on the PodNasty Wrestling Podcast, it became clear that the current NXT champion personifies the entire brand. To many mainstream wrestling fans he's a new face, but by no means is he a rookie.

The story of Balor's first NXT championship victory, on a July 4 show in Tokyo's Sumo Hall, centered around his return to Japan. It was there where he forged one of the most successful international wrestling careers in history. Now reigning atop WWE's developmental territory, Balor is not treating his current success as a stepping stone, but more like a building block for wrestling's next revolution.

Balor's unconventional view of his current run in NXT makes him as fitting an NXT champion as anybody. The lofty goals of competing on Raw, SmackDown and even WrestleMania don't define Balor the way they do most wrestlers.

Just as he was immortalized outside of WWE during his stint in Japan, Balor wants to be remembered for his accomplishments in NXT, away from the prestige of WWE's main roster.

This shouldn't be a surprise. Balor is a smaller guy in an industry of giants. His calm, quiet demeanor matched with an electrifying offense makes him the perfect idol of the unheralded.

Nobody is safe from Balor's high-flying tear through the NXT roster. Not even Balor himself.

Bleacher Report: Right off the bat, I just wanted to make sure you were OK after an incident that certainly looked scary when I saw the picture. You hit your head on a ceiling panel while going for the Coup De Grace. Are you doing fine? Are there any residual effects?

Finn Balor: I've been seeing stars, but I think they were actual stars after going through the ceiling. They weren't fictitious stars. But I'm feeling fine—that was a slight accident. Maybe I've got to put some straps on myself, keep myself down sometimes.

B/R: What was going through your mind when that happened? Was this a scary moment for you?

Balor: When I walked into the building, I looked at the ceiling and said, 'That ceiling looks a little low; I better be careful later on.' But of course, in the heat of the moment, that's the last thing I'm thinking about when I'm looking below on Solomon Crowe laying on the mat. So I jumped up, I was lucky it was a drop ceiling—it wasn't solid, and I kind of popped through it—a little bit of dust went in my hair, I came crashing down.

I think it looked a lot worse than it was. No one was hurt seriously, and we all lived to fight another day.

B/R: You recently teased to an alliance with Paul Heyman on social media, to where maybe you'll fight another day with him in your corner. Of course, fans went nuts. Was this just a harmless tease, or are you being groomed as the next Paul Heyman Guy?

Balor: I'm a big admirer of Paul, and I've had a lot of conversations with Paul about what we could do potentially in the future, but it's all hypothetical at the moment. That was some incredible, incredible fan art that I'm very fortunate that people send me all the time, and I like to publicize some of their work and that's literally all that was. A lot of people read into it their own way, and I apologize for that.

But who knows? I will be in Brooklyn for NXT Takeover, I believe SummerSlam is in Brooklyn the next night, I believe Raw is in Brooklyn the next night, so I'll be in Brooklyn. Who knows?

B/R: I love how you apologized for that tease, only to give another tease of the potential of Paul Heyman being in your corner.

Balor: Well, Alfred, I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve, all right? But I'm not going to let the cats out of the bag quite yet.

B/R: I completely understand. You were born and bred for this business, my friend.

Balor: (Laughs)

B/R: I know a lot of Internet people like the idea of Paul Heyman and Finn Balor—it sounds awesome—but honestly, Finn, you're good on promos, you've got an amazing, mysterious entrance...I don't think the Finn Balor character needs a manager, do you?

Balor: To be honest with you, as much respect and as much admiration as I have for Paul, I honestly don't see how it would work out—my character working with Paul. Maybe in the future, [we could] kind of tweak things and go a different direction, and we could work something out.

But for the moment, I'm very happy doing what I'm doing right now. And I'm very happy being in NXT, don't get me wrong. There are a lot of teases online, but what we're doing at NXT right now is groundbreaking. It's revolutionary.

For me, it's like a renaissance period in wrestling, and I want to be involved in NXT. I don't want to go to the quote-unquote main roster. I don't want to get called up, so to speak, because I believe that we at NXT are building something together that is going to be looked back on in 10 years the same way that we looked back on the ECW period as being revolutionary at that time.

This is something that I want to be involved in. I don't want to leave this behind. I came here to be part of NXT: I'm the NXT champion, I'm proud to be NXT champion, I'm going to defend the belt against Kevin Owens in Barclays, I'm going to go on to remain NXT champion and continue building this brand.

B/R: That is so interesting to hear because I've talked to several talents who are in NXT, or maybe recently just left NXT, and as much as they loved being there, they all said they couldn't wait to get to the main roster. You're on the other side, so am I to understand that if WWE proposed that you headlined a WrestleMania, you would be more comfortable with NXT and building that?

Balor: Don't get me wrong. Obviously, everyone wants to headline WrestelMania. But I believe that there will come a time [where] NXT is as influential as Raw, as influential as SmackDown, and it will be on the same card as WrestleMania.

There won't be any differentiation between NXT and Raw and SmackDown. This brand has grown. It's a completely different dynamic to any other show right now on the [WWE] Network, and I believe that maybe a year, two years down the line, the NXT Championship will be on WrestleMania.

B/R: You talk about the influence NXT has. You were part of another influential group in New Japan Pro Wrestling, the Bullet Club. It was wildly successful, and I look at all the big, independent stars who are currently under the NXT umbrella, with more to come. Do you think a Bullet Club stable—something similar to that—would work in NXT?

Balor: Stables have proven initially to always make a stir. And the Bullet Club was something that I was heavily involved in. But that's something that was in my past. That was three years ago, something that was a very special moment in time that we captured perfectly at that time. But that's not something I can just recreate. It's like trying to recapture NWO.

We can't recapture what Bullet Club was. It was a moment in time, it's gone—well, for me it's gone, obviously it's still going strong in its own right—but for me it's gone, and I'm moving on to new things. As I said, I've got plenty of tricks up my sleeve and plenty more ideas that I'm going to be touting around at the office. I'm going to look forward to the future as opposed to looking back at the past.

B/R: What's the best advice somebody's ever given you in NXT?

Balor: When I first came in, I was about to have my first match. I went up to Road Dogg and I said, 'Dogg, do you have any advice for me?' And he goes, 'Finn, you just go out there and do you. Don't change what you have done in your past, what got you here, don't change one thing.'

Credit: WWE.com

And there's a lot of small things that I've tinkered with, but for the most part, I'm just going out there and I'm being me, and if I'm advised to do something that I wouldn't normally do—if it doesn't feel right to me—I look back at that advice that Road Dogg gave me. 'Just do you. Just do what feels right,' and that's what I've been doing.

B/R: I know you grew up watching wrestling, so tell me your favorite memories of the great Roddy Piper, who recently passed away.

Balor: Unbelievable performer. He came out with the body paint once or twice.

B/R: (Laughs)

Balor: Who forgets the coconut, you know? But I think just his intensity and the promos. He really blurred the lines between sports entertainment and reality. For me, as a kid, I couldn't tell why I was drawn to him. Why he was so captivating. He just made me believe. That's the only way I can explain it. I believed this guy was the real deal. It was a terrible loss for the industry, a very sad time, but we're blessed for having such an incredible performer as part of this industry.

Alfred Konuwa is a featured columnist and on-air host for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @ThisIsNasty and subscribe to his weekly wrestling podcast.