Naomi was the guest of Lilian Garcia on last week’s Chasing Glory and the former WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion gave some insight on her mindset coming back to wrestle.
“It’s a way bigger statement than just me,” she said. “I’m having a different look coming back to wrestling. It’s just something that I just wanted to do, symbolically to recognize the struggle and also, to come in and say, ‘Look, this is who I am. This is where I am.’ I’m at a point. Yeah. You don’t have to accept me. I accept me. I love me. This is how I look. This is what it is. So, enjoy, watch me kill it. So, that’s what’s all about.”
Naomi talks about how her vacating her title wasn’t a work in a storyline, but she legitimately had to do so due to an MCL tear. This left her heartbroken.
“That was a tough time, because fans thought that was a work, they thought it was a part of the script and for and they don’t understand, that was real. I really had to vacate it when I didn’t want to. I cry. I was upset, because my MCL, really was torn. I had a slight tear. And that wasn’t supposed to happen in Mania, but I bust my butt off in rehab. I didn’t even know at the time if I was fully healed, but I fought for that and it was rough, and it almost didn’t happen. But I’m glad it did.”
Even before she was a Funkadactyl, Naomi was a primary figure in WWE’s former developmental system FCW. She says how excited she is to see the documentary on the WWE Network and drops the fun factoid that she happened to be the first ever FCW Women’s Champion and how her and AJ Lee was the main female figures to hold the fort down.
“It was me and AJ. AJ Lee holding it down at FCW. And I learned so much from her, because honestly at the time, the only one… there was only a handful of us, which is crazy, and we look at the roster now. But it was literally eight or 10 of us, that was it. That was the whole roster.
“And at the time AJ was really the… we all came in so green and not from a wrestling background. AJ was really the only one who knew what was going on and how this thing works and really helped me a lot and taught me so much, and Serena Deeb. It was just… I learned so much from those girls in itself, because I feel you never get to hear those stories or know about this stuff.”
(Transcription credit should go to Chasing Glory)
Plenty more from this captivating conversation as Naomi and Lilian talk Saudi Arabia and her relationship with Jimmy Uso. Watch the full interview below:
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