We sat down with NXT Superstar Tank Ledger to discuss his career in WWE and how he’s finding being in a tag team with fellow NXT Superstar, Hank Walker.
We started by asking Tank how he came up with the name Tank Ledger? He said:
“When you’re getting going at the WWE Performance Centre you get your wrestling name and start building that identity, and like your identity and like your character, the awesome writing team want your name to be something that you identify with.”
“I started talking to my dad about it and he was saying, it’s got to be Tank something! He was really pushing for Tank Abrams, you know like the Abrams Tank which is one of the biggest tanks in the military. I thought is sounded badass and like a week later, I got Tank Ledger so it worked out real well!”
Tank Ledger gets ready to put away Kale Dixon.
NXT
As Tank is a rising star in WWE’s developmental brand NXT, we asked him what he believes is working well and if there’s anything he’d like to improve on before he’s called up to the main roster one day.
Tank said: “We’re all our own worst critic, especially me and Tank being from the collage football background, we’re all very quick to call out our flaws. So if there’s one thing I need to work on, is not waiting, fighting back quicker, letting people know I’m there.
“A lot of times people will get up on me when I’ve got more in the tank. I don’t want to make the tag too fast when I want to pull a little more weight for my tag team partner.”
“I don’t want to toot my own horn about something I’m crushing, but I really think me and Hank right now are really hitting our stride and really clicking with our tag team moves. With things that make us unique.
“Yeah we’ve got some moves that look cool on their own, a lot of passion and fire that we can show, but I think right now, we’re starting to unlock a new level of tenacity and violence through each other, which is really exciting.”
Tank Ledger and Hank Walker have become a natural tag team.
Tag team wrestling & setting goals
Speaking of Tank’s tag team partner Hank Walker, we were keen to know how their tag team came about. Hand said:
“Some people joke that it’s just because our names rhyme, a lot of people don’t know is that we started a great relationship the second I got down here in NXT. My tryout with WWE was with Hank, so it’s come full circle. Now here we are as a true tag team.”
It happened very organically, Hank was a few months ahead of me and doing everything right, working his tail off. He was a leader even though he was a new guy and I looked up to that.”
“I wanted to be held in the same light that Hank is, I wanted to be like that and you become who you surround yourself with. So I surrounded myself with hank and people like him and we just really hit it off and fed off each other.”
“We have similar personalities and sense of humour and after a few matches together the chemistry was just there. It’s pretty cool, because we’ve just become better friends and better wrestlers ever since.”
Tank went on to tell us about the importance of taking feedback and improving his craft, saying:
“It’s about that ‘coachability’ mindset, the mindset to take feedback. You’re coming into that wrestling world and the Performance Centre is its own new world, so you have to be coachable, you have to have the ability to take feedback.”
“To be critical of yourself but still able to stay positive so that your can grow and get better. The goals you set for yourself and the work you put in day after day that’s what defines you.”
To watch the full interview with Tank, check out Passion Universe.
Interview by Omer Hagomer
Words by Sam Smith
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