Thekla’s path into professional wrestling began with punk rock, live music and one particularly unusual wrestling show in Austria.
During the September 14 episode of Talk Is Jericho (see video below), Thekla spoke with Chris Jericho about what initially attracted her to wrestling. The AEW star explained that she was heavily involved in the music scene as a teenager and regularly attended concerts featuring everything from rock and punk to hardcore bands.
Eventually, a poster advertising a “Rock and Roll Wrestling Bash” caught her attention.
“I’m a visual type, so I saw this really cool poster and it said, ‘Rock and Roll Wrestling Bash,’” Thekla recalled. “I was like, ‘Okay, I know rock and roll, but I don’t really know wrestling at all.’ So it just drew me in. We were like, ‘Let’s get tickets for this.’”
The event was held at one of her favorite music venues, with a wrestling ring set up in front of roughly 1,000 fans. Thekla and her friends ended up standing directly next to the ring for what became her first exposure to professional wrestling.
And it was certainly memorable.
Thekla recalled one wrestler named Boris the Butcher bringing out a dead chicken and using it as a weapon. Pieces of the chicken eventually wound up being thrown around by members of the crowd. A punk band also performed between matches.
“It was just the drama, the grime, everything, the violence,” she said. “I was like, ‘I think this is for me.’”
From there, Thekla began watching more wrestling in Vienna and eventually realized that her background as a musician and athlete could translate well to the ring.
“I was starting to understand, like, I would probably be really good at this because I was already playing in bands,” she said. “We had fights on the stage. We were infamously known for having a good-bad reputation. And I had a bit of an athletic background too with sports.”
Thekla ultimately began training at Wrestling School Austria, although her early wrestling education was far from conventional. She revealed that she did not even train inside a wrestling ring for the first two or three years, instead learning how to bump and work on thin judo mats.
Despite that limitation, Thekla believes the experience taught her one of the most important aspects of professional wrestling — connecting with the audience.
“It was just about being entertaining and feeling the energy and going with the flow,” she said.
That philosophy remains important to Thekla today, as she told Jericho that some of her favorite moments come when she can interact directly with fans.
“I personally have the most fun when I find myself face-to-face with a fan who’s screaming in my face,” Thekla said. “Interacting with people and pushing them to their limit that they’ve never been before — it’s really real. It’s really fun to me.”
