Trish Stratus reflects on her feud against Becky Lynch.
The Hall of Famer and The Man collided at WWE Payback inside a steel cage, a match that ended their months long rivalry. Stratus recalled how she started working with the company’s current top star during an interview with GAW TV.
WWE came to Canada and asked me to host the Canadian shows. I knew I’d be interacting with her on those shows and we started a little Twitter war. People were raving. There are always those dream matches and fantasy matches, I don’t think anyone ever put Trish Stratus and Becky Lynch together. Sasha Banks [Mercedes Mone] has been in the running because we had that epic and memorable face-off in the 2018 Royal Rumble and people fantasy match, ‘old gen vs. new gen, that’d be cool.’ I didn’t really hear Becky. When we did [the face-off], people were like, ‘this is a dream match, best of this gen and best of that gen,’ and people were interested. We saw the interest, and eventually, it took a good year, maybe over a year, to get to each other. We finally got to each other, we got to team together, which was great to be alongside her. She’s great. After we worked together and I watched her a little closer — you get busy with mom life — I became a huge fan watching her closer. Damn, she’s really something special for this generation. She really brings something.
Stratus later discusses how she knew the showdown would be important since both she and Becky were such prominent names for the division in their eras. She adds that she had a blast working with her and enjoying “kicking her ass.”
You know how we always go, ‘she wrestles like the guys, she does a promo like the guys.’ I don’t know why that’s our benchmark, but if we can not wrestle like a girl, it’s better for some reason, though nowadays wrestling like a girl is awesome, the way we wrestle these days. She really delivered, and I bought into the hype, too. ‘That would be cool.’ We worked really well together. We had never met before, and we connected when she became pregnant. Those moments where moms connect. ‘Congrats, good luck with the delivery.’ We bonded over that and became good friends outside of wrestling, completely removed from wrestling, just mom friends, which was cool. When you get to work with someone, you become super close with them, and we got to really explore each other, explore our friendships, dig into each other’s brains, and we wanted this to be something. It got lost in other storylines, but at the end of the day, it was an epic generational face-off that you could never have again. You’ll never have that dynamic. When are you going to have LeBron [LeBron James] and Jordan [Michael Jordan]? Ali [Muhammad Ali] vs. Tyson [Mike Tyson]. That fantasy match-up stuff people talk about. There was Rock and Hogan [Hulk Hogan], but I can’t recall a generational face-off like that for the women. We knew it was a special opportunity to deliver something very unique, a unique dynamic, and we didn’t want to lose that. Once you realize that was the focus, to bring something special to the fans, we worked really well together, and I enjoyed kicking her ass.
Check out the full interview below.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
