Willow Nightingale has been setting the wrestling world on fire by appearing on All Elite Wrestling, Ring of Honor, and IMPACT in a two-week period.
Nightingale surprisingly had a free moment to sit down with Denise Salcedo to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked how she feels about all the positive buzz surrounding her right now on social media, Nightingale calls it surreal.
“It’s really surreal, right, because for someone like me, who’s been a wrestling fan for so long, who’s been doing indie wrestling for however many years, it kind of seems like this is something that’s attainable, it’s possible, one day this could be your reality,” Willow Nightingale said. “And to just have that much buzz hit you at once, it’s like. You hear the phrase an overnight success, doesn’t happen overnight. I think the reason so many people were happy to see me is because I have accumulated this fan base over a certain amount of time. For me, I’ve been wrestling seven years, so for seven years, people are like, oh she’s cool, she’s got something. And you always hear your time is coming; your time is coming. And it’s like I don’t know, when is it though?”
Willow Nightingale competed for the Interim Ring of Honor Women’s World Championship at Supercard of Honor against Mercedes Martinez. When asked about how it all came together, Nightingale revealed how she first learned that Tony Khan had purchased Ring of Honor.
“I was sitting at the table with my boyfriend watching TV when Tony Khan announced that he now owns Ring of Honor. So I was like, I don’t know what this means for me. I have no idea; I was waiting to see what was next like everyone else,” Willow Nightingale recalled. “But I would say maybe a couple weeks ahead of Supercard of Honor, he reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to do the show. And I was like obviously, yes, please, thank you, let’s figure this out, let’s get it set up. And when I found out I was wrestling Mercedes, I was like, okay, so this could potentially be a career-making match. Right, like that’s a spotlight that is already elevated from what I was doing before, but now I’m wrestling Mercedes, who in my mind, is a big role model. I’ve done seminars of hers before. I’ve been like, let me pick your brain and try to learn from you.”
Even though she lost the match with Mercedes Martinez, Nightingale was pretty happy about how it went.
“At the end of it, I was pretty happy with it. Even just being in the ring with Mercedes, it’s like learning through osmosis,” Willow Nightingale explained. “It’s just like you’re so great, thank you, cool. So like being in this environment where I’m now constantly around people at AEW, all the times that I’ve been there, it’s just like leveling up every single time. I wasn’t trying to take that for granted; I wasn’t taking the opportunity lightly.”
When asked about a potential future with either Ring of Honor or All Elite Wrestling, Nightingale believes that things are looking for her on that front right now.
“It’s looking positive. I don’t have anything solid that I can tell anyone right now. But things are looking good,” Willow Nightingale said. “Again, I’ve wrestled there nine times. I’ve had nine matches there so far. And there were definitely moments on that journey where I was like, what is going on? Moments of frustration. But especially the last couple of weeks, I’ve been really reaffirmed like okay, trust the process, keep going. So yeah, stay on this journey with me, folks. Let’s see what happens next.”
What do you make of Willow Nightingale’s comments? Do you think she’ll be “All Elite” sooner rather than later? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit Denise Salcedo with a link back to this article for the transcription.
