Montel Vontavious Porter is best known to World Wrestling Entertainment fans as MVP, the cocky, bling-loving, cornrow-sporting superstar popular for his catchphrase "Ballin'!"

But MVP's audience has now expanded from the cult following of wrestling enthusiasts to women, thanks to his association with 'The View' co-host Sherri Shepherd.

Fans of the ABC daytime chat fest tuned in to WWE's 'Friday Night Smackdown' to see the newly divorced Shepherd accompanying the 35-year-old grappler ringside in his match against superstar Dolph Ziggler at New York's Madison Square Garden.

(Read also: 'Sherri Shepherd: The View Host Ready to Rumble With MVP.')

The pair even appeared together at the BET Awards in Los Angeles in June.

I caught up with the Miami-bred 250-pound powerhouse wrestler backstage at Washington, D.C.'s Verizon Center before a recent WWE 'Monday Night RAW' broadcast to find out the real deal on his apparent romance with Shepherd and to talk about his road to stardom in the WWE.

You recently appeared at the BET Awards with Sherri Shepherd. What was that experience like? Has MVP gone Hollywood now?

First things first, MVP going Hollywood is a match made in heaven. MVP is Hollywood! It was a really cool experience. I had an opportunity to meet a lot of people that I otherwise wouldn't have had an opportunity to meet. Our schedule is so grueling because I'm on the road 300 days out of the year. I did the red carpet and all the lights, and I think I might have been bitten by the bug a little bit. It was actually surreal at times because I was at the BET Awards, which had been transformed into the Michael Jackson tribute, and I had the chance to see the O'Jays perform. I was just surrounded by legendary icons within the entertainment industry and people that I grew up listening to and watching.

Though you were excited about seeing folks like the O'Jays, how was it when people like Arsenio Hall and his son got excited about meeting you?

It's weird because I'm still in that position where I've been on TV with the WWE for about three years now and my celebrity is still a realization in progress. I know that I come on TV in over 100 countries and am translated in over 20 languages all over the world, but it's still bizarre to me when I get to meet somebody like Arsenio Hall or Michael Clarke Duncan who say they're big fans of mine. It's pretty cool.

So what's the deal with you and Sherri? Is this relationship serious?

It amazes me how everybody can jump to a wedding. We were on the red carpet and a number of people were asking, "When is the wedding?" Sherri and I are exceptionally good friends and, as a matter of fact, the BET Awards was our third public outing, and people are already talking about a wedding and a marriage. There was one reporter who Sherri expressed her opinion to who then asked me, "Is she like this at home?" She's a wonderful person, and I'm very fortunate to have met her. We're very good friends.

You travel almost every week of the year. What simple at-home duty now feels like a luxury to you?

Often, I don't have time to wash clothes. For me, it's a matter of dropping off dirty clothes to pick up clean ones and being right back out. Something real simple that a lot of people probably take for granted is cooking my own food in my own kitchen. I eat out all the time. I'm always in restaurants, and I never have a home-cooked meal, so on the rare occasion that I'm home, my cousin and manager, who is also a tremendous cook, always cooks a Caribbean meal, which is a luxury. Waking up in my own bed is another one, too. I'm in hotels around the world, so to get home and wake up in my bed in my house is a pretty cool feeling.

What's the most rewarding part of being a WWE superstar?

WWE is in the business of putting smiles on people's faces. As a child growing up, I was a wrestling fan, and I remember when I saw Dusty Rhodes for the first time face to face. I was speechless. There are times when I'm out in public and I meet a little kid who looks at me with that stunned expression. I know exactly what he's feeling because I've felt that myself. To see a little kid smile and want to take a picture takes me back. I'm 35 years old and I remember being 5 years old, and Terry Funk looked at me, pointed at me and called me a little snot-nosed punk. I remember that vividly, and I have never forgotten that. Being able to give those memories to kids that I know 10 or 15 years from now will say "I met MVP one time and it was real cool" is one of the most rewarding things.

WWE fans are really fanatical. Any fan encounter in particular that stands out?

I've had one that really tripped me out. At 'WrestleMania,' I had to do a Q&A section. My brother and my security, Todd, was with me. As they were walking me back, there was a really long walkway on the other side with barricades where the fans were. I was trying to sign autographs and make my way through, and they called my attention to a girl who had traveled from Japan. She had on her version of my MVP ring suit. It said MVP on the back, and she had on the boots and the gloves. I'm a big fan of [Japanese wrestler] Masahiro Chono, and he has his own label called ArisTrisT. She brought me a gift from Japan and from his ArisTrisT store. It was buttons and other things. It just blew me away that this girl watches me in Japan and is so enthralled with me that she made her own costume on the whim that she might meet me. I was so blown away by that. I had security bring her through, and I took some pictures with her and talked to her for a little bit. We have people come from all over the world, but if I'm her favorite wrestler and she got to come all the way to the states and interact with me and I gave her that special attention, then I hope I gave to her what she gave to me.

Of the matches you've been in, which stand out among your favorites?

This is always difficult for me because I've been so fortunate to wrestle with some of the best in this industry. I've had some amazing matches with Jeff and Matt Hardy, the Undertaker, Kane and so many of the top superstars in our craft. I would have to say one of the most memorable and overwhelming was wrestling with Ric Flair at Madison Square Garden. The significance of it was that it was his last wrestling match at Madison Square Garden and my first match in the Garden. It was like the proverbial passing of the torch or what have you, and everybody knows "The Nature Boy," and he's somebody that I grew up watching. Having the honor of tapping out to the figure in Madison Square Garden at this point is one of my top favorites.

Is there a match that just went awful? One that you knew afterward was just bad?

I honestly can't remember the town and fortunately it wasn't a televised match, but it was a three-way match between me, Shelton Benjamin and Mr. Kennedy. Two of the three guys were late to the building because of traffic and late flights. We had to go out there and have a three-way match and we weren't on the same page. We were all pretty upset about that. We came back to the curtain looking at each other and knowing that it was nobody's fault. It was just one of those nights that we all wanted to forget.

Is there anybody you'd love to get in the ring with?

I think at this point, one of the people that I haven't had a chance to work with is Shawn Michaels. I was in a tag match with him shortly after I began my career in the WWE, but I've never had an opportunity to wrestle him in a singles match. As far as all of the top guys go, I've wrestled the Undertaker, Kane, Chris Jericho, Rey Mysterio Jr., Triple H, but Shawn Michaels is the one icon who I haven't had an opportunity to lock horns with.

I have to say I admire your openness about being incarcerated. Why has it been important for you to use your previous troubles with the law as a what-not-to-do guide for young people?

At the BET Awards, I think they were giving an award to Alicia Keys and she quoted Maya Angelou who said, "You can't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You have to leave one hand free to throw something back." Throughout my life, even through the turmoil and trials that I've gone through, I've always been fortunate enough to have at least one person who saw something in me and took the time to try to point me in the right direction. Whether or not I accepted it, there was always someone there who tried. When I was in prison, there were some older convicts who told me that I was too smart for this and it wasn't for me. I listened to them and I took their advice. In our urban areas, there is this overwhelming sense of hopelessness, and now we live in this "bling bling" society where all of the music is about what I have and how much money I have. The problem is that all of our kids want that, but there is no sense of deferred gratification. They all want it now, and the only thing that is real to them is the hustler on the corner who is making the dope money or the rapper who is selling millions of records or the football player.

Sometimes it even frustrates me that I'm an entertainer, so I'm one of those guys that got out through entertainment, but there are the three brothers from Jersey, the three doctors [Drs. Sampson Davis, Rameck Hunt and George Jenkins], and I always talk about them and try to hold them up. I want to show these kids that there is hope, but you have to learn how to sacrifice. You are not going to have any kind of success in life without some sort of sacrifice. It took me five and a half years to get to the WWE, and I'm lucky because some guys still aren't here. It's not that they aren't talented enough to be here. It was their goal and they still didn't make it, and I did. When I go out and talk to kids from the 'hood or I talk to kids who are considered juvenile delinquents, I can tell them, "I know what you're going through because I've went through it." When I tell them that I spent nine and a half years in prison, all of a sudden their antennas go up. They're like, "Wait a minute, this guy's for real." When I tell them that I know what's it like to eat government cheese and Kool-Aid with no sugar, they know that I'm speaking their language. And I just want to inspire kids to just give life a shot and believe in themselves and do the unthinkable. People told me I'd never make it. And I did. So it can be done. I want to be that beacon for some of those kids so they can say, "MVP did it, so I can do it."

*****

Check out MVP each week on WWE's 'Monday Night Raw' at 9pm EST on the USA Network.

He'll also be apart of WWE's largest summer pay-per-view, 'SummerSlam' on Sunday Aug. 23 live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.