Carlito Calon captured the WWE Intercontinental Championship, US Title, and two pairs of tag team gold during his seven-year run with Vince McMahon and Company. The second-generation Superstar has changed since 2010, but so has World Wrestling Entertainment.
Carlito recently called into the Chair Shots To The Cranium show and said he's focusing a lot of time recently on NBA 2k as he looks to earn a 99 rating. He is also busy working the independent wrestling scene and commented that he travels overseas more often now than he did during his tenure with WWE.
It's been eight years since Carlito's WWE release, but the last time we saw him on WWE television was during the 2014 WWE Hall Of Fame ceremony for his father Carlos Calon Sr.'s induction. Carlito spoke about what he's learned since his WWE release and credits his own maturation to continuing his physical shape.
"I think I've had time to really think about things," Carlito said. "I enjoy the slowed-down pace. What I've learned is kinda like what I think the great athletes like basketball players and stuff what you start to learn as your physical abilities start to dissipate or whatever. You start to adjust to succeed otherwise.
"I feel like a much better wrestler just because of new ways that I have found to workaround situations and entertain people. It's like a total difference performance now than when I was younger when I was just worried about how high I could jump or what flip I could do."
Although the WWE PC is a valuable resource, Carlito acknowledged that so many people training from a single source could produce an aspect of uniformity detracting from some of the individual NXT Superstars' personal characteristics.
"I don't know much about NXT, I don't really see much of it," Carlito continued. "I heard it's a great product. I heard the [WWE Performance Center] is a state-of-the-art thing like you know, I wish we had that in our day -- we didn't have that -- so you know they have a whole staff training. Not just wrestling, but weight training and all kinds of stuff
"I think it's great. The only thing is I've always been a fan of not throwing everything into one bucket, like having different styles. I feel like a lot of those guys just go into a system and instead just work the system's style and they start to deviate from what makes them unique."