In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, IMPACT Wrestling star and 2023 PWG Battle of Los Angeles Tournament winner “Speedball” Mike Bailey commented on his victory.

“PWG is the place where you go to become a star. If you look at their history, the best wrestlers in the world have all been there, it’s completely out of this world talent. My favorite part of this year’s BOLA was the diversity among all the people competing. Backstage, there were so many languages been spoken that it became extremely confusing, I started speaking Japanese to Bandido, because we were all so mixed up.

I went over 15 minutes with Jordynne Grace, and after that I was thinking, I have three more of these. At that moment, it felt insurmountable, but it was a lot like when I competed in taekwondo tournaments, you’d start at nine in the morning, you’d be there all day, and you didn’t know how much time there would be between fights. The hardest part for me is always cooling down. Luckily, there wasn’t much time between my Semi Final match and the Finals. Before the Semi’s, I got to cool down, rest and relax, but then I warmed up and I could feel all the damage from the first two fights, so I knew I couldn’t cool down or lose focus for a second, because I needed to keep my adrenaline.

Right before the end of the Finals, when we went to the outside and I did that one last springboard moonsault onto Takeshita, I remember feeling a great sense of relief, we still had the most difficult part left, but I just felt unreal, it was a truly amazing feeling.”

The full interview is available at this link.