Hyderabad: Not for nothing is Becky Lynch the WWE’s Raw Women’s champion. With a strong work ethic, the Irish wrestler was bound to go places soon after she began learning the ropes after admittedly being ‘terrible at the beginning.’ The 32-year-old has been through the grind though, and has come out grinning.
“My brother and I would watch wrestling all the time and I loved it. But if you wanted to be a wrestler, you’d have to go off to England or America to train,” the Irish woman explains.
“It was only at Finn Balor’s school that I got the opportunity learn. We wrestled for three months on just six blue mats on the floor in this tiny little hall at Saint Andrew’s national school. To be honest, I was terrible in the beginning, and wrestling was so foreign to me, I wasn’t an athlete. I was a chilled-out kid, but tough,” she recalls.
Gradually, she got hooked to the thrills. “There is no other industry like professional wrestling,” she says, adding, “You’re going out there in front of millions of people every week and testing yourself physically and mentally every single time. You must be on top of your game the entire time. But that’s the fun of it, it’s a beautiful platform, of fighting and telling stories.”
It’s not just slam-bang for the star. A lot of preparation goes into a fight. “I just try to get centered before going into an event. If I can, I do some yoga in the morning. When it comes to exercise, I do CrossFit 5-6 times a week too. Training both in and outside the ring is important. It’s about pushing yourself even when you’re dead tired and have nothing left which helps you become better than you were and better than everyone else,” she says.
Becky considers Charlotte Flair as her closest opponent and terms their Last Woman Standing match at the all-women’s WWE Evolution pay-per-view as her best.
Becky does acknowledge support from people who played key roles in her career. “There are so many of them who helped me out back when I was not believing in myself — I was one of the most irrelevant women during the women’s revolution and perhaps even an outcast,” she says, before singling out Seth Rollins as “someone who helped me a lot.”
Having reached the top, Becky has some advice for rookies. “Don’t stop working on your fitness, on your ability to talk, connect with people inside and outside the ring. You should study the game and the different athletes... and learn to believe in yourself.”
