A Quote by Tenille Dashwood

When I actually started in NXT - or FCW back then - when I did independent wrestling shows, I would be lucky if the promoter would be able to find a girl for me to wrestle.
NXT has been great to me. I love being able to wrestle the way I want to wrestle and be who I want to be. NXT is this amazing platform to do that.
I considered wrestling at a young age, but I never could relate to any of the Divas. I have always been a bigger girl, and I did not think that WWE would want a girl my size, so I never expressed my dream to wrestle.
NXT is huge, being able to be on TV internationally is a big deal, as it means you don't have to work so hard to get noticed as opposed to FCW, Deep South Wrestling and OVW, which were all televised, but locally.
When I wrestled, I would set aside the time to wrestle, so that in my mind it didn't interfere with my study time. If I'd say, "I'm going to study this many hours, then I'm going to go work out and wrestle," then when that time comes, you don't feel like you should be doing something else. That helped me psychologically. But otherwise? When I'm wrestling, I'm not studying the universe. And when I'm studying the universe, I'm not wrestling.
I started in NXT when we were still FCW in Tampa.
Back in the day when I started on the independent scene, guys would not watch women's matches, and if they did, they would do it to make fun of us.
About a year into my training, I got a call from WWE, and they signed me. I got signed right away to FCW, so my whole career has been pretty much in FCW and NXT.
For me, I got to start at FCW and see it turn into NXT, and I remember going to house shows, and there were legit ten fans in the crowd. Now, every weekend where we have a show, there are 300-plus people.
It's really cool, the opportunities that NXT brings. Who would ever thought that Jushin Liger would be in this company, Samoa Joe, Sami Zayn? It's crazy. Man, I don't know, bring anybody. I want to wrestle with everybody. Even I want to wrestle Jushin Liger, so I'm jealous.
The fact that I'm still able to wrestle on the indies and yet still do my stuff in NXT, and the fact that I wrestled in front of 15,000 people at the Barclays Center at TakeOver, and then, the following weekend, I was still doing indie shows, is wild.
I would go with my husband to the tailors where he gets his shirts made, and I would watch the bespoke process. I would ask them, "Would you be able to make that for me?" And they would always say, "Well, yes, but no." They were very French about it. I decided I would just do it for myself. And I started doing that. Then other people would notice, and want it. So I started doing things for friends, little pieces, and my own line grew that way.
Be that strong girl that everyone knew would make it through the worst, be that fearless girl, the one who would dare to do anything, be that independent girl who didn’t need a man; be that girl who never backed down.
My family has been in the wrestling business for over 70 years. I'm a third-generation wrestling promoter, and years ago, when I fist started, there was a wrestling audience in the United States in 22 regions.
If you're a fan of Indie wrestling at all, you can go back to, I think, 2007-2008, and you can see me wrestle CHIKARA. And you can see me wrestle in a tank top, and you can see me wrestle in a tank top that doesn't look like the one I have in WWE. But it's the same one.
When I was a teenager and all these shows were on I was in that business, so I knew a lot of people in the theaters and I saw many of the great shows many times. I would go in and stand in the back - they would let me in, they knew me. I saw Fiddler on the Roof, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Gypsy, and Funny Girl many times just standing in the back.
I get to watch Shinsuke Nakamura and Bobby Roode and Tye Dillinger and all these huge names in NXT wrestle on TakeOver. Then I got to wrestle alongside them.
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