The latest guest on Complex’s Unsanctioned show was pro-wrestling star Willow Nightingale, who spoke about her current stint with AEW, which included a very positive reaction from the fan-base during her Owen Hart qualifier against Red Velvet. Willow also discusses how she wanted ROH to be her home prior to them announcing their hiatus at the end of 2021. Highlights are below.
On the crowd’s positive reaction to her during her AEW Rampage match against Red Velvet:
Wow. So, I had done [AEW] Dark matches before which is really cool but you never get an entrance or anything and like, sometimes I would hear people kind of cheering for me, sometimes louder than others. Any time Aubrey [Edwards] was the ref for my match and she kind of escorts you to the ring, your referee escorts you to the ring when you don’t get an entrance and any time you’re going with Aubrey, the crowd goes wild for her. So I’m always like, man, if anybody’s cheering for me, you’re not gonna hear it over the pop that Aubrey gets [Willow laughed]. So, I never really knew exactly how the AEW fan base felt about me, other than people who knew me from the indies. But being able to have an entrance which didn’t make it to TV but that’s okay. Being able to have that moment for myself and do it in Boston which is a big city for me because more or less I feel like Willow Nightingale grew up in New England doing all those Beyond [Wrestling] shows, you know? All over Massachusetts and Maine and Connecticut. I’ve done so many shows in that area and really grew to be who I am now so to have that fan base be the one I get to have that opportunity in front of is just like the perfect storm for a debut TV match really. I think when it was done, I was — it was a great sigh of relief because I was so anxious as much as I was excited. I was just like, this is crazy. This isn’t real life, this is surreal. So being able to be like, wow, it’s done, I actually did that was like… I don’t know. I got back to the hotel that night and I was still like, this isn’t my life.
On ROH going on hiatus and how she wanted to tell the higher-ups that she wanted ROH to be her home:
I never signed anything with Ring of Honor. I was working for them and I really loved working there and I wanted to make that my home and just as I was kind of putting my big girl pants on and I was like, I’m gonna approach them and let them know what I think and that I wanna work here, that same week, they released everybody from their contracts. I was like, oh, forget that. I guess that’s not happening [Nightingale laughed]. But, it was like a very cool time to be a part of it. Cary Silkin, who had previously been the owner of Ring of Honor, actually spoke to me at Final Battle and he was like, ‘You know, we’ve had a lot of great women come through Ring of Honor and work for us but never before did we actually have a women’s division like this. Never did we really have a stacked roster of women’s wrestlers who have been putting on matches like you guys have over the past year or so’ and I was like, ‘You’re right.’ That’s why I always think it’s so perfect, the time that it finally happened for me, that I started working there. I was like, wow. It was a goal for me for so long and I wanted to be there but, you know, when the time finally came, it was just right.
On recovering from a broken neck:
It was… okay, so obviously there’s a bunch of different emotions that are kind of going through you at a time like this [Willow’s neck injury in 2019]. I can pinpoint the moment that I know for a fact, like, ‘Oh, that’s not good. This is something I’m gonna have to check on later’ but I didn’t think that it was a broken neck. Honestly, I thought if anything, I had suffered a concussion which is still not good. We definitely wanna avoid that happening. But I didn’t think that it was a broken neck and that had always been my mother’s biggest fear. She was always like, ‘You know, I’m just afraid you’re gonna break your neck one day’ and that was always the example she’d throw out there when it came to her and I having conversations about my wrestling career. So, when I went to get it checked out and everything and I ultimately found out that it was a broken neck, I was like, oh man, my mom is gonna be so mad! And she was with me but still, I was like, oh no, this justifies all of her fears and I’m very much a person who’s like, I will try to lighten the mood when everybody else is going through a really rough time. So for me, when it initially happened, it was like I was sitting in a hospital, everybody came to visit me and everybody would have tears in their eyes and be like, ‘Oh! It’s gonna be okay’ and I was just sitting there smiling like, ‘Yeah, of course it is. It’s gonna be great guys. No matter what, it’s gonna be fine.’ So it was like this very weird trying to truck through for everyone else and I don’t really think it was into a week after everything had happened; the surgery and all, that it really sunk in that I was like, oh wow, okay. I’m not gonna be wrestling for a very long time if I even do get to wrestle again, because it seems at first like it wouldn’t be possible and then my doctor was like, ‘No, you’ll be fine. I’ve done this to people who’ve gone on to play in the Super Bowl’ and I was like, ‘Oh! Well you’re telling me it’s that good’ but really, a lot of it came down to how well I would heal so there was a waiting period to really determine how practical it would be, and then, I think when I first came back from that, everything just felt off. Like I was very convinced I was not a good wrestler when I first came back, because you work so hard to get this momentum and you reach a certain level and when you have to pause, you think, oh, I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna be at this same level but that’s just not the case, even though you get like a month or so of training in before you really make your return match, it’s not the same. So it’s a little disheartening to have to try and work all that up again and try to reach that level and surpass it, but ultimately, I had a good support system.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)