WWE 'Celtic Warrior' Sheamus wants championship belt for Christmas

'I want to be the first Irishman to become WWE champion, and I will'

Sheamus is mad, and he has no problem admitting that he’s also quite bad.

“I’m going to put Cena through a table. I’ve already done it once and I’m gonna do it again,” he says.

“All the time I’ve been with WWE, I’ve been making statements, you know what I mean? I retired Jamie Noble. The fella can’t even walk properly. I’m not a nice guy!”

Poor Noble! A WWE veteran, he was on the wrong end of Sheamus’ potent "Irish Curse" kick during the Nov. 2 "Raw" show, and a subsequent pummeling from the Celtic Warrior put Noble’s career to rest for good.

That’s all in a day’s work for Sheamus, who’s had a meteoric rise in the WWE since he was promoted from the company’s ECW brand to the top-rated "Raw"  broadcast in October. Although he’s been part of "Raw" for less than two months, being WWE champion is a role that Sheamus has been preparing for most of his life.

Born Stephen Farrelly in Dublin, he was raised in a Georgian apartment by his parents (he also has two sisters) and grew up watching British wrestling broadcasts on Saturday afternoons with his grandmother. He also remembers watching WWF shows (WWE used to be known as WWF) — and quickly becoming hooked.

“I wanted to do this my whole life,” Sheamus says.

Sheamus first pursued a wrestling career in Ireland and throughout Europe in  independent leagues. “I did whatever it took to get noticed and get experience,” he recalls.

“I traveled in shows throughout Ireland, the U.K., Italy and Portugal. I honed my craft and proved my experience.”

Sheamus also had other skills he was working on simultaneously. A fluent Irish-speaker who attended Irish-speaking schools for both grammar and high school, Sheamus has been employed as an information technology professional, an actor and a security official at Lillie’s Bordello, Dublin’s trendiest nightclub, where he used to personally ensure that regular customer Bono was unbothered by other club-goers.

But wrestling was always No. 1. “People said I was crazy, I was working all the jobs back home,” Sheamus says. “But anything is possible if you put your mind to it.”

The WWE eventually took notice of the flame-haired, ambitious Irishman. The world’s most-famous and profitable pro-wrestling business stages tryout shows in the U.K. a couple of times a year, Sheamus says, and in April 2007 he earned a contract.

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Nster.com