Former WWE star Daniel Puder is one of the few professional wrestlers who successfully made the transition to MMA, going a perfect 8-0 in his career. The 33-year old retired from the sport in 2011 and shifted his focus to helping others. The Strikeforce veteran spoke to MMAOddsBreaker on Episode 109 of “The Parting Shot Podcast” and discussed a variety of topics. Why he retired from MMA undefeated in 2011 “You know what I loved fighting. Javier Mendez at American Kickboxing Academy was one of the best mentors I’ve had in my life. It was a blessing have him let me train at AKA for free, I was just with him actually 5-6 weeks ago. It’s an amazing experience when a guy that doesn’t even know you, says ‘yes I’m going to help you’ I feel that’s why I’m able to do what I do now with kids around the world. They don’t even know who I am, but I go in and add value, helping them find their purpose. I really thought I was here for a bigger a cause. Fighting is big, I love it, it was a lot of fun, it was hard work, dedication, service to training and being coached. But I wanted to push myself to the next level and I wanted to really put an impact on this world and change the world.” Rumoured fight with Kurt Angle in the UFC “It was really close [to happening in 2006]; he was the one who turned it down. He’s an Olympic Gold Medallist; he’s so tough it’s unbelievable. MMA was my thing, wrestling is my background. My love and what I was good at was fighting. Stepping into a cage with me, I would have smashed him; I would have gone after him and lit him up where he wouldn’t know what hit him. My [in ring stuff with] Kurt Angle, that wasn’t a work. As he said a few months ago on a news report, he admitted it and that was the deal, he said he caught me. If it was a work, the [WWE] would have pushed it further and I wished they would have because we could have really made a really good story out of it. Since it wasn’t a work we could have pushed it. I don’t know it was an interesting time, you know they are just coming out with another Tough Enough now and it’s going to be interesting to see what they do with it and how they tweak things.” Backstage incident with The Big Show “The Big Show [incident] wasn’t a “work” what so ever. That caught me off guard; he actually slammed me into a locker. I’ll tell you right now it didn’t feel good. I was thinking at one point do I take this guy’s kneecap out? Or do I just go with it? And I just went with it. I didn’t know what was going on, I was trying to be respectful and he was a dick. It was uncalled for, but we made up and we’re friendly now.” Experience on Season 4 of Tough Enough “What I heard about 10,000 people send in a video [to tryout] and out of those 10,000 people they called me when they saw my video. A really nice, young lady out of Stanford, Connecticut, she said ‘My team and I think you’re video is the best video we’ve seen.’ Now I made mine goofy and funny, you can Youtube it. I was jumping around, frolicking, on my motorcycle, cutting a promo and training. It was really cool; we had a fun time with it. When I got down to Venice Beach [it was] a challenge, the physical part was easy. These guys were lifting a lot more than I was. The obstacle course, I smashed that. Some guys were going to the hospital or getting put on oxygen for that. I was just great to be able to step up and really rock and roll with the physical side. But then when I got to the ring there was a challenge of cutting promos and I never did it before. I kind of didn’t do so well at that. Then they said ‘hey see that girl down there? Pick her up’ Thank god she came down to the ring with me and that’s history.” Training at American Kickboxing Academy and that team’s success “Cain Velasquez is just an awesome guy. The success they’ve had is because Javier Mendez knows how to groom and build young guys. When I was first there, I was the young guy, 16 years old, I was hungry. I really wanted to go somewhere with my life and he could see that passion in me. He helped me because of it. Thing is Javier just not just hasn’t helped me; he’s [also] helped hundreds of fighters get to their dreams and goals. He hasn’t made as much money as he could have per say but he loves helping people. He loves serving the community and building really good fighters and that’s what he’s good at. I’m really proud that AKA has been growing, I just saw it in San Jose, so I’m really proud of them.” Watching MMA “If my friends fight, I’ll follow them. But besides that I’m on the road full time and doing about 100 hours a week with the non-profit. So every once in a while I’ll check in but it’s been challenging, I’ll put it that way.” CM Punk in the UFC “I think he’s going to have a really big challenge on his hands. I think if he can fight for real and he can win, he’s going to be one of the biggest stars since sliced bread. I know for a fact that fighting is a lot different than pro wrestling or any other sport there is because you have to be so well rounded. The guys that are coming up today are not only awesome athletes, but they’ve been doing it for 5, 10, 15 years. You know what, I think he’s a great guy and I believe that he can do it because he has a lot of will, tenacity, push and drive in life so it’s pretty awesome.” Competing June 21st in for Charity Pro-Wrestling “The event is going to be awesome; it’s going to be tag team. We just signed the partners that Major Mark and myself are going against, Jessie and Alex. We’re going to really rock and give a good event. They’re a tough tag team and they wrestle a lot more than me. So I’m really going to have to pick it up. I’ve been training really hard for it. With Major Mark on my side, he wrestles a lot more than I do too. Again though my purpose is the non-profit, the pro wrestling world is really to help these athlete entertainers get to that next level. We’re going to help them through the non-profit become speakers if they want within the school systems. Show them how to do training, help them make other money besides just wrestling. Help them create a future outside of the athletic world. I’m pretty stoked to be able to get these events off the ground; we’re going to be doing four in the next year. We’re looking at L.A or Vegas for September, we’re looking at Miami for November and either maybe D.C, Mexico or Arizona for February. We’re going to be rocking and rolling and I’m pretty stoked about it.” 
You can follow Daniel on Twitter @DanielPuder. You can visting his foundation at mylifemypower.org and you can visit his personal website at DanielPuder.com. You can listen to the full audio version of this interview below (57 mins in)
