WWE veteran Becky Lynch appeared on the No-Contest Wrestling podcast, where she discussed various topics, including the stage in her career when she stepped away from pro wrestling for 7 years.
Lynch said, “When I then decided that I was going to make a living out of wrestling, I started to get confident in myself, and I thought that I was great. For the time, I was probably, maybe better than average at the time, or at least I thought. And I still — I didn’t have a clue. Like looking back, if I was to watch any of my matches I go, ‘Jesus, this is off.’ But at the time I thought I was great, because I would do all my chain wrestling that I thought was so intricate. And that was the style at the time, you know? Wrestling matches were — it was all these different wristlock reversals and on the indies, people loved it. We were all trying to be Daniel Bryan and Nigel McGuinness. And I mean, I was never trying to be AJ Styles, but he could do all of the intricate stuff as well. So that was what I did, and what I was kind of good at. And so I had these notions about myself.”
On when she started to get lost:
“But then it was kind of one of those things, where then when I when I still needed to be training, I was worried about not doing the other stuff well and looking foolish. So I don’t think I kept up as much. And then I got like too — and you know at that time as well I was 18, 19. I’d moved away from home. I was living in Canada, I was wrestling Japan, and I was wrestling around America. My Ma was like, ‘What is this thing that you are doing? You need a plan. Where are you trying to go?’ And if I showed her, what women were doing on TV at the time wasn’t the most savory. Or she wouldn’t be able to see it in the same way that I could see what I wanted to do, because I was watching Japanese women’s wrestling. And I was like, ‘That’s what I want to — I want to do that.’ But then I wrestled in Japan and I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t — I am not there yet. I am far from there.’”
On deciding to step away:
“At that same time, when I was brought over to Japan the promoter thought that I — you know, I was 18. I had dyed blonde hair and these brown eyes, and he thought I looked like Britney Spears. I didn’t, but as he had told me, ‘Ah, gaijin, all same face.’ And so he was trying to push me as this star. Which again, and the pressure of everything, and ‘I got to figure it out.’ And I’m scared I’m going to look stupid and I self-combusted. I just was like, ‘Ahhh! I don’t know what I’m doing.’ And I was just trying to — and there was no there was no real mentor. Or maybe there was, but then I was trying to push them away because I was scared. I was still a teen; I was still a kid trying to figure it all out. And I quit. I just — I left. I couldn’t take it. I got too lost and too in my own head and stepped away for seven years.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
