Titus O’Neil was a recent guest on the Pod Of Awesomeness with Edge and Christian and talked about his upcoming book, There’s No Such Thing As a Bad Kid: How I Went from Stereotype to Prototype. Titus says the book title comes from a sentence he heard while attending the Florida Sheriff’s Youth Ranch, and talked about how it changed his life.
“I was told that in the midst of me possibly being dismissed from the ranch, and many there didn’t want me to stay. One staffer there told me that he believed in me, and that was the first time anyone had ever said that to me.”
“You’ll learn a lot about me in a very short period of time in the book. It’s more a teaching tool for anyone who deals with kids in any capacity. I’ve truly come to believe that there’s no such thing as a bad kid. There are people making bad decisions in bad situations around bad influences and they’re having bad outcomes. You take those same people and put them in a good environment and they’ll have better outcomes.
This is not a wrestling book. WWE is what I do for a living, it’s not who I am for a living. I felt the same way about football. I wasn’t a football player, I played football. At some point, my wrestling days will come to an end. Who I am for a living will continue for the rest of my life. I want people to understand that there’s no such thing as a bad kid, and those kids grow up into adults. They can also change.”
Titus talked about WWE posting a feature about his mother and how he was conceived, saying his WWE character is much different than who he is as a person. Titus has been open in the past about being a product of a rape, and how he was ‘labeled as a kid who would be dead or in jail by age 16.’ Titus praised WWE Network and social media as a way for fans to connect with Superstars and see how they really do relate:
“A lot of times, our fans see our on-screen characters and see the foolishness that we do or the great things that we do, they very rarely get to see us as people. The great thing about the WWE Network is that we now get to tell better stories and more stories about who we are as people. The other thing is social media, where we can put anything we want to about ourselves and tweet whatever we want to tweet. We can raise funds, raise awareness, brighten people’s day. You’re connecting to people who don’t have the same background as you, speak the same language as you, have the same religious background. We have an innate ability to connect with people and I’ve chosen for years to use every platform I’ve had to impart the same positivity that was imparted in me and my brothers on a daily basis.”
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