If I play my cards right, I could bring network wrestling back to TV. Unfortunately, to most people, wrestling is a laughingstock. But fortunately, I'm reaching people who otherwise wouldn't watch it.
Back in the day, when I was getting into the business, you could watch Pro Wrestling Noah. You could watch Ring Of Honor Wrestling, and a lot of people would say, 'the best wrestling in the world is actually at Ring Of Honor.'
If you watch wrestling like I do, you watch for the wrestling. There's so much talking. There's some 'twit' back there with a pencil behind his ear writing down all these things for wrestlers to say.
When I first got into wrestling as a kid, I would read all of the wrestling magazines I could get my hands on. There was a satisfaction discovering that there was a whole wrestling world that existed that you didn't see on TV on Saturday morning. There was this idea that there was this stuff going on there that they didn't want us to see.
I feel more a part of the wrestling community than I feel I belong to the community of arts and letters. Why? Because wrestling requires even more dedication than writing because wrestling represents the most difficult and rewarding objective that I have ever dedicated myself to; because wrestling and wrestling coaches are among the most disciplined and self-sacrificing people I have ever known.
I remember when I had just left WWE and I was wrestling in England and Germany, I could just tell that this influx of this new wave of wrestling was coming much like it felt when I began wrestling back in '99.
I was always a fan of wrestling, right from the time I was nine or so. But eventually I decided I wanted to do professional wrestling myself, not just watch.
Part of me wants to stay involved in wrestling, because I love it. But the thing I loved most about it was the wrestling part of it. I didn't get into it to be famous or to be a TV star: I got into it because I loved the act of wrestling.
It took me a few years to explain to my colleagues and my mentors and the people that I looked up to and I wrestled that I'm not in wrestling anymore. I'm in sports entertainment. Pro' wrestling doesn't mean that we're saying we're a step up above amateur wrestling, because there's nothing above Olympic wrestling.
Wrestling can be anything... There's some forms of wrestling that I'm not too big a fan of, but I'm not going to say it's not wrestling because it is wrestling.
You go from Olympic wrestling into pro wrestling, and it's a very difficult transition, but if you make it, you can earn a great living while at the same time giving amateur wrestling a lot of exposure by being on TV every week. Fans know where you came from.
Yeah, I've been a wrestling fan. I probably got back into it when I was 16, 17. But I was a wrestling fan since I was a little girl. I used to watch it with my dad and my brother.
In my first fight, I acknowledged it. I'm a professional wrestler, this is who I am, who you know me as. But guess what, I've also been wrestling since I was 5 years old - real wrestling - amateur wrestling, Olympic wrestling.
Let's face it: when we were crazy into wrestling, there were 20 million people on Monday nights watching wrestling. So what you have are 17 million lagged wrestling fans. People who connect to it somewhere, but haven't really found an inspiration or a cultural connection to it.
My foray into the wrestling world is well documented in that I have stated many a time that I am not the kid that grows up and aspires to put wrestling trunks and wrestling boots on and get in the ring and flies around to entertain people.
Wrestling has positively impacted my life in many ways, but perhaps the one singular thing that I gained from wrestling that stands out the most is wrestling provided me with the opportunity to learn mental toughness!
I feel like I started with wrestling, and a love of pro wrestling, that lead me to MMA and the UFC. And now it's come full circle back to pro wrestling.