Top WWE SUPERSTAR: “This ADVICE From THE ROCK CHANGED My LIFE” - OVERCOME ANYTHING | Becky Lynch

0:00Hey, Lewis Howes here, and in this episode of The School of Greenness, I'm joined by WWE superstar Becky Lynch. Today, Becky reveals her journey from career uncertainty to becoming a wrestling legend. She gets real about the struggles and triumphs of her career, balancing motherhood with being a top world athlete, and discusses her unique relationship with WWE superstar Seth Rollins. Now let's dive in. I think that's the thing is that you don't get confidence by thinking about having confidence. You know, you get confidence by action. Becky Lynch made WWE history in 2019 as the first woman to win a WrestleMania main event.

0:42And she became a triple crown champion. The man is back on top! I completely destroyed myself. I had this then sense of ego, like, look at how disciplined I can be. I am so much better than everybody because I have this discipline. But ultimately, I was dying on the inside. Then I got on TV. One of the worst debuts of all time. Really? And so I failed ethically, publicly. On TV. On TV. Ooh. But hey, if you can come back from that, you can come back from anything. Let's go. There is such a level of trust in what we do. And I think I broke that trust for several people. And then it just didn't feel good.

1:19It just didn't sit right with who Rebecca Quinn is. The Rock, he, um... What was the thing he said to you, maybe behind the scenes, backstage, that no one else got to really experience, but he said to you that impacted you? One of the things that he said to me, even saying it now, just makes me feel that'll get me yeah so welcome back everyone in the school of greatness very excited about our guests we have the inspiring the man Becky Lynch in the house Rebecca good to see you welcome thank you for having me very excited about you being here and big congrats on all your success I love your story because you were not an athlete growing up really I think I even saw you were a flight attendant for a little while you dropped out of college you didn't you you failed PE in high school and yet in 2019 you were named one of the top female athletes in the world which is really cool you're WWE superstar and you are the man and I'm just so glad that you're here because I got to connect for a few minutes beforehand and I love seeing people like you with a good attitude good energy and a good heart win ah thank you so congrats on everything um one thing i wanted to ask you uh many things but one of the things is around your belief in yourself you came from ireland you got into wrestling at an early age but it sounds like you has a lot of challenges like you were into a little bit of drugs a little bit of alcohol you were kind of like whatever was school but eventually you got things in order and you became very disciplined at your craft and very focused on your dream how did you learn to build confidence during a time of maybe not feeling that confident growing up gosh I think that's you know I think that's the thing is that you you you don't you don't get confidence by thinking about having confidence you know you get confidence by action and I never had confidence before I started wrestling and I think that's why I was always trying to fit in or with the with the kids that were drinking and that would make me cool and then I'd be smoking and it would take the edge off from the self-consciousness and everything that was going on at home at the time and uh and then when i was 15 and i just failed pe i was getting ready for my junior cert which is i'm not sure what the equivalent is over here but it's your when you're 15 you're doing these exams in school that at the time they make it seem like if you fail these your life is over really but yeah all the pressure that they put on you in school this will determine the rest of your life Exactly.

4:11Where you go to school and college and everything else. And that's how and that's what what I felt like. And at the time, even though I was a little degenerate and I wasn't doing good in school and I was drinking, I was smoking, I was doing everything that I shouldn't be doing. Like I still had ambition. I still wanted to do something good in my life. I still wanted to be a lawyer or something productive in society. And I realized on one random Monday when I wanted a beer that at 15, that I needed to turn my life around. I needed to do something different that I couldn't keep going down this pathway of failing PE and just not applying myself to anything.

4:57And so I started looking up like different kickboxing things because gyms weren't a thing in Ireland back then. There was like two or something, you know, there was this big gym, but it was too preppy. It was too preppy and I was an alternative kid, you know, the ones with the black lipstick and the dog collars and all that kind of stuff. And so, you know, going to a gym just seemed too mainstream for me, too Jane Fonda for me. And so then one day I go into the computer room because in 2002 everybody had a computer room. And my brother's looking up this website and it was called Hammerlock and it was this wrestling school over in the UK.

5:40And I was like, what are you doing there? And he was like, well, I was thinking about training as a wrestler. Instantly, I had this jealousy, this feeling of, I need to do that. And I was like, are you going to go over there? And he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, there's no way. There's no way my mom is going to let me go over to the UK to train. I'm 15. I'm also a degenerate. Like, she's aware. She's aware that I'm going off the rails. and then the promoter there wrote back to him to let him know that there was two Irish lads that were going to be opening the school like an hour away from us on the train and so that's how I found out about it and he told me that and I was like oh I want to go too he was like no you're not going you have to be 16 and I was like I'll lie and he was like no I don't want to have to look after my little sister I was like you won't have to lying and I went down there and uh and i started and that was it all of a sudden for the first time in my life i wanted to apply myself to something i wanted to get better at something i saw progress in in each training session and that built confidence because not only was i applying myself and getting better at something and seeing results but i also now had this community and i think there there and and there was also this feeling of like i'm i'm different which i you know i always felt a little different you know i wasn't wasn't a cool kid even though i tried to be but but but but now i had this confidence in my difference you know and i was the only girl there too i was the only girl in a group of lads and i was hanging with them or maybe not but i was i was there i felt like i was and so that gave me confidence that i could do this and i could set myself apart and and and there was something more to me and then i just continued on there i never thought or not that i never thought maybe i had like this this suppressed dream but i still thought i was to be a lawyer and do something realistic really until i was like 17 and it was the first time i had uh played the heel role the bad guy role and i was teaming with my brother and when you're a heel when you're the bad you can do no wrong because you can just have fun you can taunt the crowd you can be an idiot and uh that's your job yes there's such freedom in that there's such freedom in that and I came back and I was like, this is what I need to do.

8:32This is what I'm meant to do. This is what I'm going to do. At 17? At 17. And then by 18, dropped out of college, moved over to Canada, wrestled around Canada, around America, around Japan, around Europe. My visa ran out from Canada. I had to move back in with my mom and my mom, God bless her, Like she's only ever wanted the best for me. And the best in her eyes was not being a wrestler, especially back then, because what I wanted, what I visualized for myself was was me being seen on par as The Rock, as Stone Cold Sea Boston, as Mick Foley, as all these lads that I looked up to. But if you watch TV and you watched how the women were booked, there was lots of brown panties matches.

9:19There was mud wrestling matches. that wasn't anything I wanted to do. That was certainly nothing my mother wanted me to do. And so... There wasn't opportunities for women to really be stars back then when you started. Not in the way that I wanted to be. Not in the way that I wanted to be. And so I started looking at the women's promotions in Japan. And then I went over there and I wrestled in Japan. And I got assigned to this advertising agency over there. that wanted to promote me as this big time wrestler. But then when I came home and I had to live with my mom again, she's going, what's your plan, what's your plan, what's your plan, what's your plan, what's your plan?

9:59Because she always wanted to plan. But with wrestling and I suppose any artistic endeavor, I genuinely think wrestling is an artistic endeavor.

10:12You can't necessarily plan that. Why not? Why can't you plan it? you can have a rough plan but so much is out of your control you know you can work towards what you want when you you can't decide when you're when you're going to get on somebody's radar what they're going to be looking for you know i think it's the same with with with say for example Well, an actor, an actor can do the best audition of their life, but they might have brown hair and the person is looking for blonde hair. And so they see this great audition, but that's not what they were looking for on that day. And and so I started to believe that if I looked a certain way, that that would give me that that was my plan.

11:08that is how I would get there because all these women looked like figure competitors and they were beautiful models and you know it was just a regular average looking girl with a a bit of a pair of biceps on me and decent set of shoulders but like at the time you know there was there was enhancements that were standardly involved in the hiring process and uh i didn't have them nor did i want to get them and uh and and so i thought well if if i have abs and if i'm ripped then if i look this way then they'll want me and so i kind of compare it to the uh survivor song you know on your passion for glory because then my my focus shifted from just how i looked and how that would make if i change how i am to make them want me as opposed to being true to myself interesting how long and then yeah wanting wanting you for who you are for who i am so how long did you transform into someone you think they would want how long was that process for well it didn't last very long because i completely destroyed myself so i started i i i started bodybuilding then i like was like oh let me sign up for this bodybuilding competition and if i can do well in this bodybuilding competition then they'll see that just the logic that goes through my head they'll see that and then they'll be like oh yeah let's sign her like she'll be on a magazine or something and we'll sign her that way interesting how old were you then 19 okay i was 19 then and uh I mean maybe it would have worked if I committed to but anyway the point was I didn't know what I was doing I was with this lad who had never trained a girl before he was a bodybuilder himself but he was a giant man and uh giant giant man and who had done many competitions and he was training me and my diet then my diet was all over the place and then he put me onto this other guy who gave me this other diet which then I just became a maceon and I was trying to wrestle around Japan and all this stuff.

13:27My body was just hurting. But I was loving how I looked in the mirror because I had these abs and I was disciplined and my focus was what I was going to eat and how I was going to train. And I had this then sense of ego, like look at how disciplined I can be. I am so much better than everybody because I have this discipline. But ultimately I was dying on the inside because I had no energy. my moods were all over the place I was like leering at cookbooks of what I was going to eat when this diet finished and ultimately I ended up not being able to make it past 10 weeks of this diet there was 2 more weeks till the competition I just the guy who was trying to me suggested a cheat meal and that was it then I just went completely off the rails and couldn't get back on And then that then became an unhealthy relationship with food for years.

14:31Really? Years and years and years. Completely destroyed how I looked at myself and everything like that and how I valued myself. How did you value yourself then? On how I looked. suddenly like from somebody who had gone from valuing myself on my substance and what I brought to the table uh in terms of wrestling and my craft I was then just now I was just conforming to what I thought thought they wanted and what society wanted but by then then I was like I don't even know if I want to wrestle anymore maybe that dream is over it's time to be realistic and get a real job. Then I ended up being a flight attendant.

15:19So you were wrestling. You were pursuing professional wrestling, I guess, at the time. Yeah. Then you quit to be a flight attendant? Well, then I was like, well, then I started thinking, like, oh, well, maybe I'll be a fitness model because that will be easy on my body. But I couldn't maintain it because I was so hungry. I just loved eating. I loved eating so much. and so then I became bulimic and all of these things and it was really just going from being somebody who cared about their mind who thought their mind was powerful to just thinking that I was a set of abs and a pair of arms and that was where I put my focus and it took a long time to shake that how old were you when you shook it

16:1735 no no no no quite but like I think it was a process it was a process it was a process because I was a flight attendant hated it but was still trying I then did the bodybuilding competition I came third by the way out of four four entries yeah yeah it sounded impressive um so so i did the bodybuilding competition was like standing up on stage oh my goodness i'm so glad they just everybody didn't have an iphone back then but um uh i i did that and i was just like why am i standing in my underwear showing people my muscles like i this this isn't this doesn't feel like me you know because for some people for some bodybuilders it's such an artistic thing they are sculpting their body they are they love it they love the discipline of it but for me it was it was some sort of a means to an end some sort of way for me to be validated by society or something that that and it just didn't feel authentic and and and true to me it just felt like i was yeah i was just trying to be something that I wasn't.

17:34It was just consumed by my body will be my vessel too. But if it looks a certain way then I'll be successful and whatever. And then I started to realise that part of wrestling that I loved wasn't just the training, it was the performance. I loved the performance, the crowd, I loved the creativity, I loved the storytelling. And I think throughout my whole life I found that storytelling is what draws me more than anything like in school i was terrible at every subject except english and history because it was just stories like it was it was hearing stories and and learning about these stories and i rocked at those subjects terrible at everything else and um and and and and so then i i went back to school to study acting and uh is this in london now or where's This is in Dublin.

18:31Oh, so I met in Dublin. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of all over the place. But like at 22, I went back to college, studied acting in Dublin, and then did a year in Chicago. Wow. And that felt like, okay, now I'm back. Now I'm back a little bit. And then it seemed more like I was part of a creative endeavor then. Really? When you're doing the acting? Yes. Yeah. When did you get back into wrestling then? so it's funny because throughout this whole time this whole time I'm just going oh but I felt felt like this was my purpose and and I gave up on it but I can't go back and my mom doesn't want me to go back and how am I going to go back because I've burnt bridges and I I don't even know if I can do it and then I had this ego of like I was good then and now I'll have to go back to training and what if I suck and all of these things and I would I would constantly try and then back off and I would dip my toe in and back off and I was I just couldn't let it go I could not let it go it would never leave me and sometimes I would be like okay I'm done I'm done and like did you see the wrestler the movie with um with Mickey Rourke it was incredible incredible yeah incredible it's so sad so sad so sad and i remember seeing that and being like see this is why i left it this is why it's so sad it's such a sad business that would be me you know and uh this old star that's now trying to figure out his life and working in a deli or something right yeah it's like ah i i did the right thing leaving and then and then and then you know i would I would see something you know or like I had friends in it that were still doing it and I tried to distance myself from it but there was always a pull and I've kept journals my whole life and like if I just go back and read it it's just there's always like a wrestling ball and I just never I didn't know how I would get back there and that's why I say you know sometimes you can't plan or you can plan, you can try and force things but sometimes timing of the universe or whatever you want to put up to is wild, it's just wild because when I finished my acting degree and I was trying to get acting work in Ireland I ended up getting stunt work on the Vikings, the TV show and I was like I don't have a clue what I'm doing so they they were like you can come down and do a stint and i was like yeah i'll do it i gotta i gotta figure something out so i went down to a wrestling school and it was the guy that was teaching the wrestling school of joe that uh that said would you think about going for a wwe try it because i think you'd get it yeah that was it and he he had just gone he had just gotten uh accepted he he him and his girlfriend at the time rachel who was one of my best friends they'd both gotten accepted to wwe and he suggested me go even though at this time i had decided i was going to move back to new york i lived in new york briefly in between my first and second year of college i was going to move back there i was going to pursue you know acting trying to get into more theater and when he said that it was just like excited this it was It was just this pull.

22:06It was this instinct. You know, after feeling like I was forcing everything for so many years. I was like, whoosh. But the thing is, is if I had gotten signed when I was 19 when I wanted to, I wouldn't have ended up where I am now. You know, like I would have been mouthy. I wouldn't have understood life. I would have had this ego. I would have messed everything up. Probably burned more bridges. and then I just would have been, who knows what would have happened. But all of these other things that were happening and as I was trying to figure out life and I was getting all this experience, helped so much.

22:46But then I ended up in the perfect place, at the perfect time, with the perfect people and with this drive to change things and change how the women were booked. And all of a sudden, what I wanted to do back then didn't seem so crazy now for a few years it still seemed a little crazy but then we got there we got there so we got there and we're still good so you you do this scene as like a stunt person yeah from the tv show yeah and they're like okay let's put you through some training to be able to do the stunt training right yeah and brings you back to kind of like the wrestling roots yeah and he's like oh I think you can make this I guess this is a school for the WWE yes so you go for a tryout and then if you get that try and they'll give you a contract to NXT which is the development and then you can go and learn to be a WWE superstar so we said do the tryout I think you'll make it and go into kind of the yeah the underground the up-and-coming and as soon as he said it I was like oh yeah and what happened oh yeah the trial you got i got it but like i went in there with this mindset of there is no way they will not want me there's no way look at my experience i'm like a full trained actor but i've also had this experience of main eventing in japan and i'm a stunt woman and i was like there's there's no how would they not want me i've done a bodybuilding competition right right like amassed all of this wacky experience interesting to where i was like super confident there's no way that these people are refusing me a contract and then i was also like i will die before i quit wow because they put you through all these drills which a lot of people quit yeah yeah they gave up how many people how many people came in when you were there or how many people were there when you were there versus i guess a few years later well so so there was a try well the triad there was 30 people two people got offered a contract um and then how many people when i started i was the first i was the first class of this brand new performance center that they'd opened in orlando what year is this this is 2013 okay and like yeah i remember my first day and they were like look to the person left and look to the person right because they're not gonna make it one of you isn't gonna make it not You know, it was, the likelihood is only one of you are going to make it.

25:24Of course, many, many of us made it. Many, many of us made it. And some have come and gone over the years. But, you know, I was like, oh, I don't know that I'm going to make it. Really? Well, no. Like, outwardly, I could be like, I could see why I wouldn't make it. But there was still this. I was so scared of not making it. And I was so scared of failing. I was so scared of failing. But there was just this little voice of like, this is what you're meant to do. You will main event wrestling. And with absolutely no reason to believe it, by the way. It was terrible. Like when I came back, I was so mindful.

26:09Can I curse on you? Sure. That I was so insecure. because now I was with the most beautiful women I'd ever seen, these giant behemoths of men that just looked like superstars. And then there was me, the perfectly average girl from Dublin, who just felt like she had something. I felt like I had something to offer, something in here, you know? How many people were there? How many men and women are at this first day? Gosh, I think there was like maybe 10 women. and like 50 dudes or something like that yeah yeah we were really outnumbered back then wow really outnumbered back then but uh yeah yeah yeah i was like oh yeah yeah no no how did you not lose your confidence going oh i did oh completely lost gone soon as i walked in that building woof gone gone it was gone anything that i had in the tryout was completely gone and just continued to just be dwindled away as I went through the first few months into I would say the first year.

27:16The first year. And it wasn't until I had this breakdown and I remember crying from the depths of my soul to my friend Frenchie. It was April. It was April 2014. and I just felt like I was doing everything I could to become better but I wasn't like I wasn't becoming better like I was just in my own way and I remember another one of my friends his wrestling name was Aiden English and I'd actually gone to college with him in Chicago randomly acting colleges wrestling's a little village you know you just meet people they just pop up and like I remember him saying yeah sometimes you have a bad day maybe you'll have a bad week but nobody has a bad month i was like buddy i've had a bad seven months like i'm i'm screwed and uh but i remember just thinking like i'm not a bad person like i'm i suck right now but i love this and at least i'm not a bad person and for some weird reason that gave me a bit more confidence i don't know why i don't know why i think because maybe there's this old thought of of wrestling or maybe any sport or endeavor that's competitive where you kind of have to be cutthroat and i hate that i don't like that especially in something like wrestling where you're not doing it on your own you're not making history on your own everything is is a team effort yes you want to be the best but like rising tides and all that jazz and you gotta everything's a collaboration everything's a collaboration even when you're competing you're collaborating yeah but i wasn't going to be able to change the trajectory of women's wrestling by myself i needed a group of women which i was there with who all had the same goal it was myself stasha charlotte and bailey and we all and and page and emma and other girls that were there and we all wanted this this this different uh future for the support and uh and we're all working together but but there was this this feeling of okay i'm not willing to cut anybody's throat to to to get on top that made me feel like okay all right well maybe maybe that mentality will help me and i don't need to be i don't need to be the biggest name in in the business i just need to do this i just need to make a living out of it i just need to to be able to tell stories interesting wrestle and in that first year i guess from you know you said you had this breakdown in april 2014 that was 10 years ago oh my goodness isn't that crazy a decade ago next next month will be a decade um where did you feel like you were not connecting with in that first year was it the story aspect the athlete aspect was it in ring in ring gotcha in ring the story part was what helped me that's what saved my job kept you in it yeah yeah because dusty roads was the promo teacher at the time and dusty like loved his his broken toys the ones that were like rough around the edges but he saw that had some soul or something something about them just just a little something just a spark and he he tried to bring that out and so i didn't know i didn't know who i wanted to be i did everybody was like find a character find a character right character so i try out all these stupid characters none of them worked no and of course none of them were they were all awful but like there but but it was it was the trying it was the yeah yeah it was the being able to put yourself out there and throw at the wall and see what sticks right nothing stuff but but but but i tried and i kept i kept trying and i think he valued the creativity more than more than the outcome because if somebody came in they were the total package um i can point to there's a wrestler called la night at the time um who right now is making big waves in wrestling but at the time he was down there we started on the same day and he had everything he had it just down he had it down you know so dusty he was like yeah you're great but he had no more work to do because he already had his act down whereas somebody like me was completely lost completely screwed had uh and and and i think i think i think there was a combination of of dusty and william regal that saved my job wow many many times because they saw that there was something something there in this irish girl that had not a clue so that had not a clue because i didn't like look like any of these other girls that were like stunners and i wasn't great in the ring but there was something when i talked that was unique was that was unique yeah interesting yeah so i mean from that moment i guess now are they is it like six days a week training it was so it was like five days a week and then we would do three shows so you do monday tuesday you would do um a school session which is you'd watch matches but then there'd be extra training gosh that would have been so fun the watching the matches just i mean that whole experience just like being a full-time athlete training watching testing trying just like in hindsight right but during it but during it was but i remember that that was one of the things that uh triple h would always say you know because he was head of developmental and he was always enjoy this enjoy this there's never gonna be and there was times when I would feel like I was in a Rocky movie and you know like I get that like and you could enjoy it but the other part of it was not sleeping because you were always scared that you were going to be on the chopping block you could be cut like every week yeah yeah there was they we called it Black Friday and you'd come in you'd get pulled into the office and that was it your dream would be over and uh you know I had several friends that that got cut and and it was devastating and my friend joe the reason that i got signed in the first place who i lived with he got cut and so that was a whole new world to navigate um but but so once once the fear of not being cut subsided then you could enjoy it more but when you were scared that you were going to get fired every other day not enjoyable not enjoyable at all so when did you feel like i'm making it like when did you feel like okay i'm actually making it i don't know in my sport in society culturally financially when was the moment from 10 years ago to like i'm arriving so i think it was shortly after that shortly after the breakdown shortly after the breakdown of okay wait i'm not a bad person and then i remember coming into promo class not doing a character but just cutting an angry promo of of of i am sick of the i put in all of this work i have done this i have done that i have done this blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and and and and this is why i deserve a shot this is why i need to be on tv and i remember cutting that promo and then like people like seeing a bit more of an edge and it wasn't just a hi yeah please don't fire me hi hi hi hi i'm so happy to be here like there was there was this there was now this weird confidence and this um i wasn't so meek anymore like i had a chip on my shoulder and i was ready to fight and then things started to to to happen there and like then i got on tv one of the worst debuts of all time oh really oh my god terrible uh i i came out there doing this stupid Irish jig and I can't I can't the Irish jig but like you try to dance yeah yeah yeah yeah tried tried to try to do the Irish dance I tried to do the Irish like as as hammed up as possible like shameless just shameless but like at the time there was this girl Emmett she was doing this wacky dance and it was like okay well like wackiness is getting people on TV there was there was just wacky characters left right and center because that was the thing about the developmental system down there you got the chance to be wacky and you got the chance to try things and fail and so I failed epically publicly on TV on TV that lives on forever that will never be erased from history but hey if you can come back from that you can come back from anything and and so the greatest part of it was like I didn't even realize how awful it was until like a a few nights later.

36:37And I remember seeing Triple H and being like, what did you think? As if he was like, oh yeah, that was amazing. You dominated, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the audience loved me. They were still, they were real positive to me. I think, come on, like I was a little idiot. Like, I suppose you couldn't really boo me. Like, God bless her. You know, what did she think? What was she thinking? Look at this fool. But yeah, and then I tried various different things. things but I remember I remember after that and then just having this different perspective and this gratitude that I was able to pay my bills and the food in my fridge was bought by the money that I'd made from wrestling and the roof over my head was paid for by the money that I'd made from wrestling and I was driving a car with the money that I'd made from wrestling and like I I remember just driving with just tears of gratitude that I could afford these things with the money that I'd made from wrestling.

37:41Because I've never felt like money that I've made from wrestling is real money. You know? It just doesn't feel like real money because I'm not working, you know? You're having fun. I'm having fun. I love what I do. I love what I do. Wow. I love it. I love it. And sometimes it's hard and sometimes there's so many opinions and there's, you know, like our wrestling fans, they're so vocal and they're so great. But, you know, you take the good with the bad. So sometimes you're getting lots of negative opinions on what you're doing or you're getting. And so where you or you think creative should be this way or you should be booked that way.

38:24And so you can get bogged down in those things. When it comes to the creative process and I'm putting together a match or I am thinking about a promo, I don't think there's anything bar like playing with my child that makes me feel more alive. like I just I love it so much and I love just like something coming to me and building from that you know just these little seeds of ideas like what if we try this you know what if we try this maybe this will work and maybe it'll be awful but that's the greatest thing about wrestling is that you because we do it 52 weeks a year because we're on the road constantly you get to try and fail so often but you get to try and succeed so often too and you never know which way it's gonna go but if you keep trying you know sometimes you hit gold well sometimes you don't right sometimes you think something's gold and other people don't and but that's art right like you do the art for what you want to do and then whatever the audience takes out of it is up to them big uh wwe fan rick rubin we had on the show i love rick and he talks about what you just said making art for you and writing in your journal in your diary the things that are meaningful for you your art not worrying what people are going to think about it but having the courage to put it out there and allowing others to see it as well that's like part of the process yeah and uh he's a big fan isn't he oh he's huge wrestling yeah yeah yeah and his book is it's amazing have you read it yeah it's so good read it listen to it yeah he's great yeah and i i love because i just like sometimes i just uh i'm like okay what do i need right now universe tell me yeah yeah and then it's of course it's exactly what you need in that moment i love it um but it is it is that but the other thing about wrestling which is so different from any other artistic endeavor like writing a book you have it you you you can take your time you know if you're writing a script or whatever maybe like a movie or a song if you have an album but like say if you're writing a song you can just take your time to do that wrestling we don't we ain't we ain't got time yeah like this show is gonna go live on TV we've got to make it happen 8 p.m.

40:54and if at 7 p.m. you don't have something you better find something because we're gonna go live have you ever not felt like you were prepared before going live and having to come up with something on the spot a million times really oh yeah because now it's different but it used to be back in the day the show would be getting rewritten while the show was going on live in front of people so you would have like an idea of what you're going to say and then somebody comes up no no no no you have to say this find a way to put this in and so you're okay going out the curtain and changing things as you're going out yes you have to evolve what you're going to say yeah sometimes and that's happened like several times and but it's really exciting it's scary but exciting at the same time because it's chaos yeah and it's chaos and so whatever comes out is great because you can't it's just organic It's just in the moment.

41:50It's the ultimate yes and experience. Yes. I love it. It's so exciting. Because you don't know what's going to happen. But something's going to happen. There's been so many times when I've had like we're putting together a match. But we haven't had the time. And so like you're going out and you think that you have something. But you're not sure. And you're not sure if everybody else is on the same page. But you go out there and something happens. Something's going to happen. Because something has to happen. And based on what happens they might rewrite the next thing and the next thing. and it just keeps evolving, huh?

42:19Yeah. Because you never go out there and nothing happens. Right. Because that can't happen. Because that would be weird. You're like, people aren't just going to stand in the rain and wait to be told what to do. Someone's going to say something and hit someone and just go on to the next person. And we're just going to go because that's what has to happen. Yeah. So it's such a... They'll throw you out there and you just figure it out. Yeah. It's such an exciting, addictive business. Wow, that's exciting. I told you I've never been to a show so I've got to come and watch you. You've got to come.

42:48It's the best. I'm curious, when is there a moment, and you've had so many different matches over the last 10, 15 years, when was the match or the moment that you were in the most flow, that you felt like 100 % authentic to you, that the words were flowing, the movement was flowing, like it was all connecting and the audience was connected to you? Gosh, I suppose there's several. um like recently recently i had a match with trish stratus it was a cage match and it it it just felt like yeah i'm so present everything that it needs to happen is happening and that was back in september um so that's like there's like these big matches that stand out because it you know it often happen on live events and different things but there's big moments these big events built around it and then um the a match that i had with uh bianca belair wrestlemania 38 one of my favorite matches one of my favorite stories um leading up to it and i was the bad guy and i loved it i loved that i was having so much fun and she was she's this great athlete and this great baby face and She can do everything.

44:08And I was getting to, because I'd robbed the title from her, essentially, like I'd underhandedly beat her. Yeah. And I was going to be able to give her back her championship. She would beat me for it. I wasn't handing it over. Right, right, right. She would beat me for it. But it was that, you know, her redemption story. And that was so fun to be a part of. And then there was another match that I had in 2018 with Charlotte Flair. was the last woman standing. And that one stands out because I remember it being the first match where I felt confident in it, in the moment. I can do no wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

44:49What year is this? It's 2018. 2018, okay. Wow. And so there's like big ones that stand out over time, but yeah. I love all these stories you have in your book, and I want people to get this. It's called The Man, Not Your Average Girl. Make sure you guys pick up a copy of this because there's so many beautiful stories in here. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about this, you talked about is, and we mentioned it off camera beforehand, that I think it was 2019. You were kind of at the top of your, I guess, game in the industry. But you also felt like you weren't 100 % authentic to you. Is that right?

45:27Or you weren't being the person you fully wanted to be? Yeah. Was that related to just things that the industry wanted you to do or things you felt like you were to do? Or is that other personal stuff that was holding you back or what was playing a part in that? Maybe a bit of everything. Like I, so it was coming from underneath, right? I was coming from being this underdog that the audience loved because she was smiley and happy and would do creative things online because she was never getting an opportunity on TV. But even though I wouldn't get opportunities on TV necessarily, I was always doing stuff with the digital team or on social media.

46:14I would create these little stories, these stupid little videos. skits and stories yeah that i thought were funny and entertaining and so that the audience could get to know who i was and then they wanted to turn me heel they wanted to turn me into a bad guy against charlotte flair who at the time was uh she was a good guy but but she you know she's the daughter of rick flair and she had multiple title opportunities and was seen very much as a chosen one and so when they were going to turn me heel I knew she knew kind of a lot of people knew this wasn't going to be a heel turn this was going to be a mega baby face turn for me because now I would get this attitude and this shoulder chip and all that kind of stuff but I think um and that worked to a certain point because I would rely on social media things a lot and and then I think I kind of started to put stuff out there into the world and onto the internet that whereas I would justify it's business and this is making people talk and it's whatever but I know it hurt people's feelings the people that didn't weren't in on it you know like it's a different thing when you're in the ring or you know and you're cutting promos and stuff like that and i was like but this is what people want they want me to be like this but me as a person didn't necessarily feel i didn't feel good about that and i would always justify it but it it left me feeling icky i suppose interesting and like what changed until what moment until what moment what do you mean like when did you change that how long did i stop that for yeah it was until i went out and had my child yeah yeah so it was like from from i would say mid 2019 then i just felt like it was just forced that it all felt very forced and i didn't have formidable opponents necessarily i I didn't have people that were built up for me on the backside.

48:34So I was trying to, I was trying to, like, I was the champion. I had this historical moment of being the first woman to main event at WrestleMania. But then my first opponent was somebody who the audience didn't know, who was quite green. And, you know, none of this was her fault, but it shouldn't have been my first opponent. So just then things just didn't feel like they were right. and you know I felt like I was trying this still trying the social media thing that just felt inauthentic and I just I don't know I felt like I put out some stuff that I wish I didn't you know I just wish I didn't put that out there because you know social media can be a great tool but also can be horribly negative and it can cost real relationships if people aren't in on it.

49:36And so I didn't like that. I think whatever, I will always say, whatever you want to say about me, whatever you want to say about me is fair game. If we can make money on TV, let's make money. But not everybody's like that. I know not everybody's like that. And so you have to, there is such a level of trust in what we do. And I think I broke that trust for several people. And then, and it just didn't feel good. It just didn't sit right with who Rebecca Quinn is. And so even though I could justify Becky Lynch, it's business, it's business, it's business. At the end of the day, my gut said no. My gut was no and I was going against it and it felt inauthentic.

50:21And then I went and had my daughter and then I haven't relied on that since. Really? And I felt just so much better. Really? So much better, so much lighter. I don't put stock in it. I tell my stories on TV.

50:45I tell them in the ring. I tell them with my promos. I don't need to be tweeting mean stuff at people on a random Sunday afternoon. You know what I mean? You talk about your daughter having your daughter and also kind of the fear and insecurity you had about, I guess, telling the WWE about being pregnant and how is this going to affect your career. How did you navigate that? It's just hot. to have you know um i i uh did you think you would still have a career if you had a child or and you had you seen someone do this before no that was the thing i'd never seen somebody do it before wow and so that's why i felt like i had to do it because wait a minute why should i have to choose you know why should i have to choose apart from the obvious point of time off but people get People get injured all the time.

51:43You can tear your ACL and you're out for a year. So why can't I be out for a year? Because I bring a child into the world. Stuff happens. And so stuff is going to happen. And this is a new world. And we're going to have to find a way to make it happen so that women can still be superstars, still be entertainers, still be on top, but also be mothers if they want to be. you know that's that that was my feeling like why not why can't i and so for better or worse i was going to be the crash test dummy but i just felt like all right i've i've changed the game in one way you know obviously not by myself with a lot of help sure sure you know i've been part of this change let me continue to be part of change let me push some let me push some some boundaries and Let's see what this can create.

52:40Let's see what happens. Let me make life more hard on myself, but also way better on myself because now I have another purpose. And life is just so much better. Way better now. So much better. I mean, you talk about it here also going through different relationships, personal relationships that didn't work out, that you were stuck in and felt like you should have been out of much sooner. I was telling you before that I'd probably done that five or six times in my life where I stayed in relationships too long when I knew, trying to force them when I knew it wasn't really the right thing for either of us.

53:24When did you meet your husband? Did you think you could be in a relationship with someone in the business as well and what is the thing you love about him the most so many things um i met him first in 2014 i was an extra i was an extra and he was part of the shield which was like the freaking backstreet boys of wrestling you know what i mean like he was a major star and i remember just like standing around there awkwardly like like, hi, hi, hi, trying to introduce myself there. And then this guy comes over to me and it's Seth Rollins and he introduces himself and he says, hi, I'm Colby, what's your story?