I think WWE is a great.
If you’re content in WWE, then you have peaked. You have peaked in your own earning capacity for what you’re going to bring home to your family, and you’ve peaked in what you offer to WWE in terms of your own talent to exploit.
The style is getting faster and faster. The athletes are getting better and better. The future is pretty bright for WWE.
I am an entertainer and I am an athlete, and WWE is the biggest performance-based show in the world.
I’ve been doing this close to 19 years now, and I always dreamed of being in the WWE.
It took me 11 years to get a shot at the WWE championship; not just to win it, but just to get a shot, but luckily I was able to capitalize on that and become WWE champion, but if I had quit I wouldn’t have been in that position.
A lot of celebrities who come on WWE, they don’t know what to expect. And sometimes our crowd and our fans eat them up.
It’s one thing to put out the opportunity, but it’s another to take it and run with it. People say to me, ‘Thank you for the opportunity,’ and I always respond with, ‘Thank you for taking it.’ We need to be able to see where, how, these changes can grow. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was WWE.
I didn’t have any pedigree or any last name that would get me an opportunity to get looked at by WWE.
WWE, in the back of my mind, was always the dream job, and most people don’t get their dream jobs.
There is nothing more than the world to me than performing in front of the WWE Universe. So I would like to do it as long as I can. As long as they will have me.
You can’t dictate to a country or a religion about how they handle things, but having said that, WWE is at the forefront of a women’s evolution in the world, and what you can’t do is effect change anywhere by staying away from it.
One thing I’ve learned from years of working in WWE is that the road to WrestleMania always starts at the Royal Rumble. That’s why it’s so important to win the Rumble: because it’s your chance to secure a championship match at WWE’s biggest event of the year – WrestleMania.
My whole ‘WWE’ career has been rebuilding myself and finding the confidence that I once had. It’s been one hell of a journey. There have been times I felt like the prodigal son because I left wrestling and abandoned this thing that I loved.
After being signed by WWE, Edge, Christian, Mark Henry, Giant Silva, Test and Ken Shamrock all trained at my house. I had a pool room with an indoor pool and a garden behind it. I took out the garden and put in a wrestling ring.
After match, in WWE, I do not drink alcohol. I just drink a lot of water.
When I first came into WWE, I got asked to change my hair to blonde just because I was a brand new girl and the Bella Twins had really dark hair and they were Mexican-Italian too so WWE didn’t want me to get lost in the mix and start thinking there was a triplet in the mix.
To be clear, NXT is a great place to be at, you know what I mean? … Obviously, everybody aspires to be on Raw or Smackdown. That’s why they sign with WWE, because they want to be able to perform on that stage and at Wrestlemania and Summerslam.
I will never say anything negative about WWE.
Since day one, my inception, when I came into the world – I had my eyes on power. The WWE championship is power.
Fans, wrestlers, and even the general public have been conditioned to believe that there’s an enormous skill gap between WWE and everyone else.
I am performing on a nightly basis for WWE. I’m doing it in front of tens of thousands of people at the live events then millions on ‘Monday Night Raw.’
Being part of WWE is beautiful. You’re on the biggest stage of them all. You’re living well; you’re making good money, and the only flipside to that is that you’re on the grind, and you’ve got to be committed. You’ve got to make sure to understand what being on the grind is.
I’ve been lucky enough to make history in WWE in many different ways, and I’m never going to stop dreaming big, because that’s what makes life fun!
I think part of my journeys here and the places I was able to be at and the styles of wrestling I was able to experience and the friendships and just the world experience that I garnered before I came here to WWE helped me tremendously when I got here.
Shinsuke – he is by far one of the best competitors in the world. It is no surprise to me that he found his way to WWE.
If you’re not in the WWE and bouncing around in the Indy shows, you’re not with the best.
I think healthy competition is great, and I think WWE would agree.
I started traveling around the world by myself by the time I got to 14. I worked really hard because I knew what my goal was, which was to be in WWE.
WCW and WWE were two totally different environments. A lot of guys in WCW were making a lot of money, and the work schedule wasn’t that hard. You had to earn it in WWE.
That generic outlook of what a ‘WWE champion’ should be is a joke to me. The casual fan walks in and expects to see a guy in short trunks with abs and a shaven body. I do not believe in that.
Scott Armstrong got me my tryout at the WWE Performance Center. I went there and got my tryout and it was one of the most physically trying things in my life.
As far as the experience level of some of the WWE divas, there are girls who get rushed along in the process. They’re beautiful and we want to get them on TV as soon as possible. Sometimes that doesn’t leave for a lot of time for wrestling training.
That’s actually the main reason I decided to leave WWE: the brutal schedule that you have when you work for a company like WWE.
WWE is basically scooping up all the talent and making it really difficult. They say they want competition and like competition, but I don’t believe that. They are trying to make this a monopoly.
For many years prior to landing my big break with WWE, I learned a lot about uphill battles. I had to scratch and claw day after day for a really big dream that, at many times, seemed totally impossible.
When you’re an independent wrestler, committing a lot of time and effort into honing your craft as much as possible in as many different places as possible will catch the WWE’s interest as far as the independent level goes.
I think the WWE is a great place for professional athletes. Floyd Mayweather did it. Mike Tyson has done it. Even Donald Trump has appeared in the ring.
Just the extent of the reach that the WWE Universe has around the world is incredible.
By the time I got to WWE, I had a lot more confidence and willingness to speak up.
I was having a lot of issues with just a lot of social media trolls: people would try to make fun of my size and my weight to the WWE and what not. I just decided to go out there and post a picture of me in a bathing suit. I said, ‘You know what? This is my body. I’m going to embrace it, and I’m going to show the world.’
I was lucky to have been able to work so closely with Vince McMahon as he was able to see up-close what I could contribute to WWE, which lead to some amazing years not only at ringside, but also in the boardroom.
Walking into the WWE I was brand new; I did not know how things worked. Deep down I wanted everyone to cheer and adore me but this is the WWE where it doesn’t work that way all the time.
A big reason why I signed with WWE in the first place was because my son wanted to see me wrestle in WWE, and he wanted to see me wrestle John Cena.
It would have been very hard to grow if I hadn’t stepped outside the WWE bubble and gain a clear perspective on everything.
I was a 19 year old kid; I was 170 lbs soaking wet. I didn’t have an identity. I didn’t have a look. I didn’t have the proper gear. I was just a young guy trying to be a wrestler. So, to be honest, WWE didn’t even give me a second look.
Who would have ever thought that, within a couple months of getting into the WWE, that I’d be wrestling in the main event for the world championship? Then, nine months after getting here, actually being the world champion.
When you commit to a WWE contract, you’re committing to some serious time away from home.
You want to change Saudi Arabia? You send something like WWE.
When you get a record attendance for What Culture Pro Wrestling – or just recently with Matt Cross, we did a record attendance for Next Gen in Tennessee. These are various brands. They’re not rinky-dink. They’re small – they’re not WWE – but their soul is there.
I really got struck by lightning when it came to my decision to leave WWE. If I literally think about that day and who I was then, it’s drastic. It almost happened overnight for me.
I know I’m not going to be working with the WWE forever. That’s why I’m going to be the Mayor of the city of Houston, so I can move on to the next stage of my life.
It’s always been one of those dreams, to make it to the WWE.
I grew up on WWE. Eddie Guerrero is my everything. He’s my hero, as are Shawn Michaels and Tiger Mask. I tried to model myself after them.
I think Edge has completely put himself on the map as a bona fide WWE superstar.
To know that a kid could come up to me in 20 or 30 years and say, ‘Hey, here’s a picture of us. I met you at a meet-and-greet, and I idolized you as a child. I’m a WWE Superstar, too, because you inspired me.’ That’s crazy to think, but it could happen. I made it, so if I can make it, anybody can.
Prior to the Cruiserweight Classic, I had a tryout with WWE in 2013 and was told that I wasn’t what they were looking for at the moment.
