AEW Champ Swerve Strickland Says US Army Prepared Him For Wrestling Stardom

AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland's one of the most accomplished wrestlers in the world ... and he says he owes a lot of his success to years spent in the United States Army.

Swerve stopped by the TMZ office on Monday for a conversation with Babcock ... where he opened up on everything from becoming the first Black AEW world champ, to how his military service prepared him for life, including wrestling.

"Like two weeks after I graduated high school, I was going to basic training and that got me ready to like do stuff on my own. It's not going to get done if you don't do it, if you don't take the initiative to get up and just grind and go," Strickland said of the experience.

Swerve, signal communications specialist, completed basic training in South Carolina in 2007, before being shipped to Georgia for nearly 6 months of additional training. He ultimately served for 8 years before leaving service in 2015.

Strickland, who didn't get to see his dad on a regular basis, says the Army taught him to be a man.

"Most of the time I was with my mom and my sisters and stuff. So as a man, I'm glad I was able to go into my adulthood through the military rather than like, cause I didn't really have my dad there in the household with me. So it was really cool to just be able to get up and learn to be a man on my own around other men of other different walks of life in the hard way."

Swerve hasn't just turned into a man ... he's the man.

After defeating the legendary Samoa Joe for the AEW World Championship title last month, Swerve is gearing up to fight Christian Cage at AEW's Double or Nothing on May 26!