AEW's 'Speedball' Mike Bailey on Barefoot Wrestling, Throwing Crazy Spin Kicks, More

AEW's roster has grown and evolved with each year since its inception. New faces arrive from all over, but the most recent signing is one fans have been hyped about for a long time.

"Speedball" Mike Bailey has long been considered a perfect candidate to join All Elite Wrestling by fans familiar with the 34-year-old.

Not only has Bailey made waves in the United States with TNA and numerous indie promotions, but runs with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, AAA and multiple companies in Canada and Europe have also made him one of the hottest talents a promoter could book for their show.

Following his recent debut with AEW, we had a chance to speak to Bailey about signing with the company, wanting to open up a wrestling school, martial arts, mullets, why French-Canadian dubbed movies are more vulgar, and much more.

On the March 12 episode of AEW Dynamite, Bailey officially debuted with the company after being teased in vignettes.

AEW immediately put the Quebec native in the hunt for gold by competing in the International Championship Eliminator Tournament and advancing past his first opponent.

Bailey reflected on why he signed with the company at this point in his career after spending years as a journeyman working all over the world.

"I think my biggest accomplishment in pro wrestling, and in life to be honest, is making every single year better than the last," he said. "It was time for me to step up and make it to the big leagues, and AEW is where the best wrestle, and in my opinion, it's where I belong.

"My favorite thing to do in pro wrestling so far has been going around and going to so many places. When I couldn't come to the U.S. for five years, I actively made the decision to be in as many places as possible.

"I would spend my time traveling around the world on a monthly basis. Spending one month in Japan, one month in Europe, and then one month back in Canada.

"Over the last three years under my previous contract, I was allowed to do all the independent bookings that I want. I wrestled for every single promotion in America that I could because I love variety.

"Obviously, right now, AEW is my focus. It's where I want to be, it's where I want to wrestle, but wrestling for New Japan and CMLL and going to those places to represent AEW would be a huge honor."

Bailey's first AEW opponent was The Beast Mortos, someone he has faced multiple times before in multi-man matches but never in singles competition.

"He's fantastic," Bailey said of Mortos. "He's one of those guys with a very accurate reputation of the kind of person you want to work with. And honestly, he was the perfect debut for me. He is exactly the kind of wrestler I have good matches with.

"My first prolonged tour for pro wrestling was when I spent two months in Mexico in 2015, and I wrestled Taurus there, back when that was his gimmick. My first-ever match in Mexico was a trios tag match, and one of my opponents was Taurus under a very old gimmick.

"It was a weird full-circle moment to get my AEW debut with him."

As a 4th Dan black belt in taekwondo, Bailey brings some legit fighting skills to the ring. Martial arts may have been the first thing he attempted, but becoming a pro wrestler was always the goal.

"It's very funny because people think it's the other way around, that I started pro wrestling because of my martial arts background, but it wasn't at all," he said. "Me and my older brother loved wrestling and did as much of it as we could when we were children.

"I had a friend of mine who started doing taekwondo at a school nearby to my house and was like 'Hey, would you like to come train?' The first thought I had in my mind was this is going to be great when I start pro wrestling someday, which is an absurd thing to believe when you're 11 years old, but it did work out."

When Speedball first became interested in pro wrestling, earning a living as an MMA fighter was not as feasible as it is today, so the focus has always been on the squared circle.

"I think if I was born 10 years later than I was and instead of wrestling on television I saw the UFC, I'm sure I would have gone down that route," Bailey said.

"By the time MMA became a thing you could actually pursue, like there's schools, there's gyms, it's being broadcast to the greater public, I was already married to professional wrestling."

Whenever a new name arrives in a promotion, fans begin formulating scenarios and dream matches for them. The wrestlers often have their own wish list of opponents, too, and Speedball is no different.

"On top of that list is Bryan Danielson," Bailey said. "If that is still a possibility, if that is still something that can happen within the next few years, that is definitely very, very high on the list for me.

"There's a lot of obvious ones. I'd love to mix it up with "Hangman" Adam Page, who is doing absolutely fantastic. One of my favorite performers there right now.

"I would love to mix it up with MJF. I think the kind of wrestling and the kind of program he does, he does better than anybody, and I haven't really had the chance to go and do that with someone who does it as well as he does.

"So, I think that would be a great learning opportunity for me, but also a chance to showcase the other side of 'Speedball' Mike Bailey that people might not have seen as much."

Bailey is coming into AEW with a lot of popularity, but there are still a lot of fans who may not know anything; and for Speedball, that is exactly how it should be.

"I wish that they didn't know anything at all," he said. "That is my favorite place to be. That has been my bread and butter. Being on television in the U.S. and getting more famous, that has been the hardest part, but I want people to see me with no expectations.

"I want people to see me bowing, smiling with a mouth guard, probably undersized for a pro wrestler, and think 'What the hell is this guy going to do?' And then the match starts and I'm throwing crazy spin kicks at people's heads."

We solicited a few questions from fans, and Zak Ralph asked about how involved Bailey was with making his new entrance music.

"I love Mikey Ruckus and I think his work is fantastic," he said. "He came to me and one of the things he said was 'I have this idea, I have this vision.' And from then on, I wasn't going to question it.

"If he had come at me like 'I'm not sure what we can do. What do you want?,' then I might have had more input. But if he's like 'Dude I got this. I see it' Then that's great and I let him take the ball and run, and my god did he score. I love the song. I love how it came out.

"That makes me feel very validated as a professional wrestler and for Speedball Mike Bailey as a brand that someone can look at me and say 'I have a vision for this character and this personality.' I think that's why Mikey is so great and I think we're going to have a great working relationship together.

Marc Quill asked which Canadian wrestler Bailey would face from the past or present, and Speedball had an intriguing response.

"I get a lot of flak for this and this is when I get very controversial," he said. "I think 2025 is the best year for professional wrestling in history. It's hard to not be nostalgic, and of course you have to give people like Bret Hart his credit for what an innovator he was and just how special he was as a performer.

"But I don't think there is or has ever been a Canadian pro wrestler as good as Kenny Omega. I'm sure and I hope that there will be 10 years from now. Maybe we don't know him or he's just gotten started in professional wrestling and 20 years from now he will be outdone.

"But for now, it's Kenny Omega by leaps and bounds. My goal is to make it as far as I can so that I can one day have someone I train surpass me, and that's a much bigger goal for me than making it far myself."

Brynlee Jade asked if there are pros and cons to wrestling barefoot.

"I think pro wrestling over the course of time has lost functional reform and people kind of want to look like pro wrestlers and be pro wrestlers even though that's not what they should be doing to give an ideal performance," Bailey said. "Wrestling in bare feet, for me, feels so much more comfortable for many reasons.

"The main benefit is full range of motion when it comes to my feet, which allows me to push with my toes more, which is how I move because of martial arts. It allows me to grab the ropes with my toes. If you see me on the top rope, you will see that I have the rope jammed between my big toe and second toe and holding it with my feet for extra balance.

"People always think I would break toes or break ankles, but that really doesn't happen, or at least it hasn't happened in a long time; and if it does, I don't think wrestling shoes are going to protect me much when I flip off the top rope to the concrete floor and land directly on my heels. Shoes would still mess me up.

"The main issue with it is grip. Do you know that spot where someone goes for a jack-knife and they double-leg the guy and flip over, and then with the person's back pressed up against the other person's stomach, they double bridge up to their feet? I can't do that because my feet don't have enough grip to push."

Pro wrestling relies a lot on wrestlers having their own unique style to set them apart from everyone else. Their gear, merch, entrance music and many other things are factored into a star's overall presentation. One way many people stand out is by having a signature hairstyle.

The looks can run the gamut from shaved heads to braids extending several feet and everything in between. Mohawks, dreadlocks, perms and every color of dye you could imagine have been used, but few hairstyles are as iconic in pro wrestling as the mullet.

As an owner of an epic mullet, Bailey shared his thoughts on which wrestlers have had the best ones over the years.

"So there's a lot of big and wild ones," he said. "Ricky Morton probably has the most famous mullet in professional wrestling. Crush had one of the all-time mullets.

"However, for my own mullet, I'm not looking for big, over the top '80s hair-band kind of mullet. I like it a lot more stylish and I think in that regard, Eddie Guerrero is the mullet GOAT. I think his later mid-WCW mullet is the best in professional wrestling.

"It suited him so well. It didn't look crazy. It looked natural and it looked good, but it was still kind of ridiculous, which is perfect.

A lot of pro wrestlers have goals both in and out of the business, but Speedball seems to have both feet firmly planted inside the squared circle.

When asked about his goals, he spoke about wanting to open a school to pass down wrestling knowledge to the next generation.

"Pro wrestling is my main drive and focus," Bailey said. "I mean, there's a lot of things that are associated with that and tangential to that. There's pro wrestling, but then there's also having pro wrestling matches which is only one specific aspect of pro wrestling.

"The long-term goal for me has been for a long time to have my own facility, have my own school. Ideally, I'd buy a warehouse so I can have a studio, a gym, a place where people can do martial arts, we can put on wrestling shows, people can film videos and record podcasts all in one place.

"I love teaching. I love training and I'm trying to make it as far as I can in my own wrestling career so that, one day, I can have my students surpass me. That is the ultimate goal."

Whenever we interview an AEW talent, we always like to end it with a movie review. Bailey spoke about a few different films, but his first choice is a classic.

"A couple of months ago, I saw The Deer Hunter for the first time," he said. "And I thought that was one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. It's very old, but it's absolutely wonderful.

"It does something that a lot of movies will do, which is contain a lot of Simpsons references that I will then begin to understand. The Deer Hunter has so many of those."

Bailey also spoke about a Japanese film called The Crescent Moon with Cats and why the French-Canadian dubbed version of Slapshot is so much more vulgar. You can hear Bailey's comments about those films in the video above.

All quotes were edited for clarity and conciseness. Bailey's full unedited answers can be heard in the videos included with this interview. You can follow Speedball on Twitter/X and Bluesky. You can follow Chris Mueller on Twitter/X and Bluesky.