Levi Cooper is all about finding perspective.
During an interview with the Bleav in Pro Wrestling podcast, Levi Cooper (fka Tucker Knight) spoke about his current run on the independent scene. Cooper has been working primarily in the Pacific Northwest near his home in Vancouver, Washington. He’s worked for DEFY and Prestige Wrestling in recent months, and said that his goal now is to just enjoy what he’s doing as a wrestler.
“The main thing I wanted to do when I came back to wrestling was just to do it because I love it and do it because I have a certain presence, like my own kind of being present inside of the ring that I just kind of can’t get anywhere else in my life. And so that’s sort of been kind of the ethos of why I wanted to come back and kind of what I was looking for as sort of the main thing for me in wrestling because I felt like I lost that a little bit, just with the ways things were. And it is what it is, we go through those kinds of things in life. We have to learn those lessons and figure out what your proverbial why is for doing things. And I’ve been able to do that and feel very good about it.
Cooper then spoke about how his WWE release affected him, noting that he’s still great friends with his former partner, Otis. He said that the positive to the situation is he can focus more on his family, and he’s all about finding perspective and making the most of it.
“It definitely kind of drug me down. I wasn’t doing good obviously at the end and that’s not the way you dream of things going down. You know just obviously disappointing to kind of, Otis and I have an actual friendship, a very close friendship, I would even go as far as to call it a brotherhood, you know, we have a genuine love for one another,” Cooper said. “It’s kind of like losing a piece of family, right, somebody that you see every single week and now all the sudden you’re at home and you don’t see them anymore and they’re still out doing their thing.
“That doesn’t not hurt, but at the same time, I think pro wrestling was way more of a childhood dream of his than it was of mine, you know. And it was always kind of something that I would have liked to do but not like, ‘Oh I have to do that and I won’t be able to live without doing it.’ And like I said, kind of coming out the other side obviously and getting to spend the time with my family now, I’ve found gratefulness in the way that things went down and sort of I just believe that life is what it is and you kind of have to figure out your perspective and deal with it accordingly.”
Cooper spoke with WrestleZone after his WWE release where he shared his plans for his gimmick on the independent scene, as well as a “country club asshole” gimmick he pitched while he was still with WWE. Read more about both gimmicks and check out the full interview at this link.
