Corey Graves recently spoke with Lilian Garcia on the Chasing Glory podcast where he discussed being told his in-ring career was over.

On his relationship with CM Punk:

“I get that a lot,” Graves admitted. “[Punk] and I, up until semi-recently, were always close friends. He actually held my first-born kid before I did. I was in Spain. I knew my son was going to be born, and it became, ‘okay, do I take this tour of Spain to support my child or am I actually going to be in Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] for him to be born. Punk was actually in town getting surgery of some sort. He buzzed me and asked if I minded if he goes and see [my]kid? So, he and I were super tight. I had learned a lot from him, and different paths happened, and different career choices are made.

“He and I don’t speak with each other anymore, but I never take that as an insult when they say that they see a lot of him in me because he helped me out a lot early in my career.”

On Triple H Telling Him His Career Was Over:

“We were at The [WWE] Performance Center and Triple H, who is the boss, he was there,” Graves recalled. “I had been on the shelf for a few weeks and I was just like, ‘man, I don’t know what is taking so long?’ I remember talking to the doctors and asking when I could come back in, and they were giving me the run around stating that they were waiting on a few things, and having to look at a few tests, so I couldn’t get a straight answer from anybody. I had walked up to Hunter and he was in the middle of a workout, and I was passing through the gym. I was like, ‘hey boss, do you have any updates or anything?’ I don’t think he was prepared at that moment to tell me, but he didn’t want to sugarcoat anything, but he had kind of blurted it out. I kind of caught him off guard, so he didn’t have a gentle way of telling me, he was just like, ‘yeah, I would expect the worst.’ He was trying to justify it but you can tell that he wasn’t ready to be in that moment, but he didn’t want to lie to me, which I can respect that, but it was like the whole world came crashing down to me. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was going to burst into tears. I didn’t want to cry in front of anybody else, so I made a B-line out of the gym up into the locker room. William Regal was in there. He was standing there, and I walked in, and I broke down. I told him, and all he did was hug me. There wasn’t anything he could have told me that was going to change the fact that my dreams were being shattered on a moment’s notice. He was there for me and counselled me as best as he could.”