Jungle Boy has reached a turning point in his career as he is no longer a tag team player and has shifted towards being a singles star after his former partner Luchasaurus and past manager Christian Cage turned on him.
Now with a new direction, Jungle Boy has pivoted to a nickname, with him now using his real name of Jack Perry going forward.
While speaking with ComicBook.com's Liam Crowley, Perry revealed that he originally wanted to stay away from using his real name in order to separate his personal and professional lives.
Reality
"I initially went with the whole Jungle Boy thing as a way to not be myself or more what I guess people thought I was," Perry said. "It was my way of really getting people to just watch my wrestling, which was really important to me. I wanted people to just watch me do what I did in the ring. I didn't want to have to talk or have a character that other people were trying to push on me. It was like, I'm Jungle Boy. I don't talk, I don't do anything. You just got to watch what's in the ring. A lot of that was to avoid my personal life in a way."
The reason for the change is due to the nature of his current feud with Cage and Luchasaurus as Cage has frequently brought up Perry's family on AEW programming.
"Christian goes and just blows all that out of the water and is going nuts every week, saying all this stuff," Perry continued. "At that point it's kind of like, what am I waiting for now? This seems like the time to go for it."
Perry will wrestle Luchasaurus inside a steel cage this Saturday at the AEW Full Gear pay-per-view.