AEW star Jack Evans was recently interviewed by Chris Van Vliet, during which he discussed his time in All Elite Wrestling and how due to the COVID-19 pandemic he become lazy outside of the ring. Evans. He is currently a free agent following his AEW departure. Check out the highlights below:

On his run in AEW:

“I feel for that first year, the run went good and we had a little place of a semi-comedic tag team, not straight comedy, but we were doing stuff with Kevin Smith and we had a place. Then there was the Mexican border. Me and Angelico got stuck in Mexico and it got closed for the COVID restrictions. We had a four-month layoff, I came back, had one match, and then in practice before a match, I got my face broken again. Then, I had another month and a half, two-month layoff and I feel after that, I never came back. I feel I deteriorated. I can’t even blame it on ring rust. I don’t know what happened, but after that, I never came back, we never had the same momentum, but it wasn’t one of those things where I felt like I was wrestling good and the momentum didn’t get started. I felt like I had deteriorated in the ring and it started giving me these self-confidence problems. Anyone who knows me, who has been in the locker room, I’m so nervous before my matches. I dry heave. I’m the most annoying guy in the locker room. When I step through the curtain, 100% confident and even cocky. With this thing, I’d go through the curtain and still be nervous as hell. After the COVID layoff and the layoff from the face break, I feel on a personal level, I never came back to wrestle like me, both character, in-ring, anything. Also, that salary contract made me a bit soft. There was even a little while where I got plump. I kind of fell off after that layoff and I only started getting back on the ball towards the end and by then, the company had already made up its mind on me. I did get kinda, not lazy in the ring, but I wasn’t as good in the ring and I was lazy outside the ring. It all started with the original COVID layoff and face break layoff.”

On becoming soft:

“It made me soft. Totally no fire, nothing. I just wasn’t going down and doing the lucha training, I used to always practice a little something to keep up on my skills, and I didn’t. I went through eight or nine months of nothing. The only exercise I would get was in the ring. I really do think it was my fault for getting too [internet connection issues]….basically, after I started getting that salaried money, I turned a bit lazy and I feel it was bad for me and helped speed along the in-ring deterioration.”