[5] Shaffer had been a successful high school wrestler, winning the 2010 New Jersey State Wrestling Championship at 119 lb.
"[9] Shaffer, whose hair was bleached for the role, "plays the reserved and withdrawn Kyle to perfection," said film critic Brandon Fibbs.
[7] As for the film director Tom McCarthy, he said: "I knew that if the kid we cast had never wrestled, he wasn’t going to be able to fake it, at least not at the level we wanted Kyle to be.
[12] He played the character Squirrel in the 2015 film We Are Your Friends, starring Zac Efron and directed by Max Joseph.
At the same time, he briefly filled in as a guest host on the MTV series Catfish: The TV Show in place of Joseph.