When I was in seventh grade, I was a scrawny boy with no muscles, so I went out for wrestling. My intention was to develop secret wrestling skills so that if I were jumped by a bully, I'd shout, 'Ha!' and he'd be on the ground in a headlock.
Since retiring, there's only been one time I actually dreamed about wrestling. In my dream, I was wrestling against Kurt Angle. I had him clamped in a headlock. I was breathing hard, and I remember telling myself, 'This is only a dream. It's not real.' But the longer I held Kurt in a headlock, I started to believe it was real.
I thought wrestling was the stuff where people jumped off ropes. So that was my experience with 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.
I love what I'm seeing out there with Pro Wrestling Syndicate, Northeast Wrestling, Big Time Wrestling, and WildKat in New Orleans. There is a lot of good stuff out there.
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.
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!
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.
Catch wrestling is pro wrestling, if you look at the ground moves and the rule set. It's just about learning the art of it for yourself.
It's a little crazy. Last year, I was in seventh grade, and we were the babies at the school - 'cause my middle school's eighth grade and seventh grade - and now I'm eighth grade, and all these new students have come in, and they're all like, 'Oh my gosh! Darci Lynne!'
I did start wrestling after I moved to Iowa, I think in the seventh grade. It's really a part of the Iowa culture so it's hard not to do it if you like sports.
I was just lucky to be there ahead of the curve to be the driving force behind bringing this amazing style of wrestling from Japan that combined Lucha Libre, American professional wrestling, Canadian professional wrestling and Japanese wrestling all into one beautiful mix that fans worldwide absolutely can't get enough of.
I'm not, like, an English speaker, so I have confidence in my wrestling skills, also, like, body language, hand gestures, facial expressions. I put all of my emotion in my wrestling.
I used to be weak - as did all British fighters - with wrestling, because we don't have high school wrestling or college wrestling here.
I see it as my responsibility to start trying to help wrestling because if I don't do something, wrestling is going to die - like, wrestling as we know it.
In college wrestling, you see a lot of talented athletes come in and fail because Division I class wrestling is the pinnacle of wrestling in America.
The wrestling world is unique. There are things that happened, and there are things that didn't happen, but in wrestling, you just say they all happened. Some of it's fun to let stay out there - it adds to the mystique and wrestling lore.