Beth Phoenix recently appeared on Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette and talked about how important having advocates for women’s wrestling is for talent. Renee brought up the fact that you will often hear horror stories about women holding each other down in the business, but Molly Holly ended up helping Beth out in a big way. Molly ultimately paid for her wrestling training, and Beth spoke about how Molly Holly gave her a shot she probably shouldn’t have had when she was breaking into the wrestling business.
“I feel like you hit the nail on the head right there and it’s like, what’s the type of story that really grabs a headline? It’s always like, ‘so-and-so is catty and held this person down’ and blah, blah, blah. Everyone always wants the drama and it’s not necessarily ‘headline news’ to be like, ‘no, this person is a living angel.’ I was essentially a fan, I sucked at that time. The match that I gave her, I was just not good,” she remarked, “but Molly saw in me, I guess maybe a passion or the commitment and the desire to improve. And that’s what she gave me, the opportunity to improve when in the situation I was in financially in a situation—I couldn’t have made that happen.
“There was a time when maybe those stories wouldn’t get the traction, but I’m so proud to tell the stories because the more we normalize that, the more we’re going to see that it’s not just a bunch drama and cattiness. There is a lot of folks helping out each other and there is a lot of men that help the women too. It wasn’t all like, ‘the men are holding us down’ and blah, blah blah— there was a lot of advocates for the women to be better and to get more opportunities. Fit Finlay, Dustin [Rhodes], there’s so many guys taking us aside and helping. I don’t know, it just wasn’t the way it was always painted out to be, if that makes sense.”
Beth went on to talk about how she doesn’t believe that wrestling has to be one set way, adding that she believes it’s a spectrum and we’re all just a group of different people. She also went on to share some valuable advice she learned from Molly as she made her way up in the business, and said Molly taught her to treat everyone the same, no matter what their role is. She explained that it didn’t matter if it was Vince McMahon or a janitor, she should treat them with the same respect, and Beth said she believes keeping that attitude true throughout her career has aided her.
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