During a recent interview with TVInsider.com, Lana commented on her new WWE contract, the backlash to her storyline with Bobby Lashley, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On her contract extension with WWE: “I’m so incredibly grateful. I love WWE so much. It has given me so many different platforms of storytelling and entertaining. From Total Divas to dedicating my matches to being with so many different people from Tamina, Dolph Ziggler, having mixed match challenges, dance battles with Naomi. I feel like I’m living my dream. My whole life I’ve wanted to entertain and tell stories and wanted to put smiles on people’s faces. I get to do that here. I get to tell compelling stories. If people like me or hate me, at the end of the day, I’m still entertaining people. They may not like it, but they are still talking about me and what I’m doing. That’s the whole point. The WWE universe has this love-hate relationship with me. At the end of the day I’m making people feel something, I’m connecting with them. If they love it or hate it, at least they are feeling something towards me. That’s my goal and why I’m in the business of story-telling and entertaining is for them to feel a passionate emotion. If they are doing that, I’m doing my job.”
On the backlash via social media: “I have to tell you it has been eye-opening to me how mean people are and what type of bullies people are in the world. I can’t express enough of how mind-blowing it is. People don’t have to agree with my decisions in life, that’s fine, but if they don’t agree with me that doesn’t give them the right to come on my Instagram and call me a whore or a slut. I’ve been called a prostitute on there. What are you even talking about, really? That I’m ‘ugly, fat, the worst human.’ Cyber-bullying is incredible. I knew it existed, but I never really thought it was to this extent. It’s really wrong. I would consider myself a strong individual. I’m a pretty resilient individual. I have tough skin. It still sometimes get to you. I took a step back thinking, ‘If you’re doing this to me, are you doing this to other people? People at your school or your work? Your kids?’ When I was in fifth and ninth grade, I was dealing with a lot of emotions. If people are coming at me calling me names, that could really affect you. Calling you fat, ugly, stupid, dumb. People have told me to jump off bridges. That’s really wrong. You do that to people who are going through their own insecurities you can really have a negative affect on people. You see people in result of being cyber-bullying who have harmed themselves, cut themselves, even taken their lives. Do people want to be responsible for that? I just want people to make a stand and say that is wrong. Just because you disagree with someone’s lifestyle doesn’t mean that you should come and be mean to them in life or on social media. Go talk to your friends about it if you are criticizing, but don’t come on my social platform and talk about it. To me, it makes me wonder if these individuals are miserable with themselves. It has been eye-opening. People casting stones. How about taking a look at your own life before judging me?”
On her goals for 2020: “This year is [all about] clarity of vision. I’m super excited about 2020. Last year, around April or May, I wrote down 100 dreams, wild dreams. I then wrote down 10 goals that I wanted to achieve in the next 12-18 months. What I cannot emphasize enough as we are coming into the new year is for people to write down their goals they want to achieve and wildest dreams they want to achieve in their life and keep that in front of them. I would say 80 percent of those goals have happened. One of those goals was to live my best life. I was able to go skydiving in Dubai, going to fashion weeks like New York, Paris and Arab fashion weeks. The crazy thing was returning to TV and Bobby, it was for the season premiere of Monday Night Raw. That was one of the things in my 10 goals is to be something on Raw or Smackdown and impacting people and giving people something to talk about. To see that, literally my wildest dreams come true, it’s mind-blowing. I’m so thankful. I’m making my goals and dreams for the next year, and the sky’s the limit. Yes, I will be getting back in the ring. Anything can happen, it’s WWE. I’d love to be champion — why not?”
