During a recent appearance on Sidewalks Entertainment, WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton spoke on originally wanting to go to the Olympics and her first televised match in WWE.
Before becoming a professional wrestler, Stratton wanted to go to the Olympics for gymnastics, but had to quit due to getting injured.
“So, yes, I was a gymnast basically my entire life. I grew up doing gymnastics. I wanted to go to the Olympics. That was like my ultimate goal. However, injuries and stuff like that kind of had me fall short of that. So eventually I had to quit gymnastics. It was very sad. Then I took up CrossFit and then I did bodybuilding for a little bit. I kind of was- I wanted to do something a little bit more competitive and I saw wrestling on Instagram and my mom and I too were scrolling through the channels and SmackDown was on. My mom had mentioned like, ‘that’s totally something I can see you doing’, I was like, ‘yeah, whatever, mom, it’s fine.’ Then eventually I was like, you know what, I’m gonna give it a go. So I looked up my nearest pro wrestling school, and it was Mr. Kennedy’s. I signed up for classes. Then my mom actually got in contact with Greg Gagne, who is an old wrestler for WWE. He agreed to train me and help me get a tryout. Then I tried out and they signed me a week later and I went through the whole system. I was in NXT for a little bit. I was there for about two years. Then I got called up around the Royal Rumble two years ago. Then eventually I won Money In The Bank and I cashed in and I became the WWE Women’s Champion and here we are.”
Stratton said that for her first televised match on TV, she was nervous, had no finisher and just made one up that day.
“Oh, that’s a really good question. I think what like, kind of added a lot of pressure was that it was live. It was live TV. I remember my first ever match. I was so nervous. I don’t even think I had like a finisher. I think I just made up a finisher that day. So it being live really, really scared me. However, I feel like because of gymnastics, I work really well under pressure because in gymnastics, you only have one chance to do your routine flawlessly. So that kind of carried over to wrestling and with it being live and stuff like that, I’ve learned to roll with the punches and like accept the pressure and just be good under pressure. So yeah, we’re learning, we’re still learning as we go and I’m having a great time while doing it.”
Stratton also talks on WrestleMania returning to Las Vegas and much more! You can watch the full interview below:
Stratton is set to defend the Women’s Crown Jewel Championship against WWE Women’s World Champion Stephanie Vaquer at the Crown Jewel premium live event next Saturday in Perth, Australia from the RAC Arena.
Crown Jewel will live on the ESPN app in the US and Netflix internationally, with a start time of 8:00 am ET/5:00 am PT.
(Quote source: Fightful)