During a recent appearance on the “Busted Open Radio” podcast, WWE Superstar Natalya commented on Zoey Stark’s horrific injury on RAW, asking Triple H if she could work an WWE EVOLVE show, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On feeling terrible for Zoey Stark: “It sucks. It sucks that it happened. I felt terrible because I was backstage when it happened. We had just had our match. Everybody was excited and there was a lot of commotion and I know Zoey (Stark) — any time Zoey gets to perform, especially on Raw, she takes it very seriously. She’s a student of the game. She loves this and she takes it very seriously. She pours her heart into it so I think the second she found out that she was gonna have this match, the wheels were already spinning in her head about how do I make this match stand out? How do I make it special? How do I make it amazing?”
On Stark wanting to show her best with Kairi Sane and Rhea Ripley: “The group that she was in, they’re no longer there so she was probably thinking like, I just — it’s like all of us. We just want to be our best. We put the most pressure on ourselves. I know I do. I’m the one that puts more pressure on myself than anyone but I think with Zoey, she’s a total pro… She has very high standards for herself. So I think she wanted to do a lot in this match to really remind everybody of who she is because she is an incredible wrestler.”
On how she expects Stark to return better than ever: “Listen, I bet you anything, Zoey Stark beats every single person’s record in coming back from whatever this injury is. I don’t know the particulars of what it is. She tweeted that she’s gonna be out for a minute. But, I guarantee you that she’s gonna come back better than she’s ever been with a totally different perspective because she’s a student of the game.”
On asking Triple H to work WWE EVOLVE: “I was at an EVOLVE taping because I asked WWE, I asked Hunter and the powers that be if I can go to EVOLVE. Because I really am interested in what they’re doing at EVOLVE…”
During a recent appearance on the “No-Contest Wrestling” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley commented on his “I Quit Match” with The Rock at the 1999 WWE Royal Rumble, less chair shots taking place in wrestling these days, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On wrestling generally phasing out chair shots to the head: “I’m glad that chair shots to the head are gone. I mean, you see them once in a great while, but you will never — and hopefully there’s no one doing this on the independents. You’ll never see a match like the one I had with The Rock with the 11 shots; that was definitely overkill. I’m glad. That was tough.”
On watching the match again recently: “That’s wasn’t a fun watch. I actually did a watch-along with some fans to celebrate whatever anniversary we just passed on that. It was actually a fun match up until the chairs. There was a lot of good dialogue on the microphone, Rock, of course, with the humor. It was really going well, and then that ending was just a little much.”
For many professional wrestlers, the story of their first training session is a defining chapter — and WWE Women’s Intercontinental Champion Lyra Valkyria recently opened up about her own pivotal moment during an interview on the “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” podcast.
Looking back, Lyra admitted her journey into wrestling began on a whim during a late-night viewing of Monday Night RAW. She said,
“Honestly, I didn’t have this moment of thinking, ‘Yeah, I can do that,’” she shared. “It was one of those nights—I was watching Raw at 1 a.m., totally down the rabbit hole, and I suddenly thought, ‘Where can I go to try this?’ I was never the outgoing one. I was the shy, quiet friend who always needed someone to go with me if I wanted to start something new.”
She continued, “This time, I just thought, ‘If I go, I’ll just do it.’ I even considered giving a fake name — just in case it went horribly, no one would know, and my friends would never find out. It was around 3 a.m. when I was on my phone looking up wrestling schools. I made this random, impulsive decision: I’m going tomorrow. If I went to sleep and said, ‘I’ll do it next week,’ I wouldn’t have. It was one of those strange, instinctive decisions—just get up and go. And it completely changed my life. That one little decision to try something new — it sounds like a cliché, but it really did change everything for me.”
(h/t – Fightful)
