WWE Superstar Natalya was a recent guest on the “My Love Letter to Wrestling” podcast and discussed how she and her husband TJ Wilson (Tyson Kidd) train their talents, what type of classes and training they offer, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On Tyson Kidd training Tyson Fury for his WWE match at Crown Jewel: “So, during the pandemic, my husband and I being crazy and fanatical, we have to have a ring. Even though we’re very embedded in the business, we’re still big fans of the business. We really love the business. TJ actually was gifted the ring. It was one of those things where he was like, ‘Hey, I want a place where if anybody needs to work on stuff, they can come train.’ So the powers that be in WWE were like, ‘That’s great,’ because if people want to go over a match or, you know, if somebody like — TJ trained Tyson Fury. It’s a place a safe private spot where people can work on their craft.”
On training classes: “Well, everything evolves and changes so fast that you have to really think on the fly. So it’d be kind of like an actor or going to an improv class. It’s more than that, too. It’s also for conditioning in order to stay in ring shape and be ready. To do what we do at the most elite level, you have to really keep your body in shape. Running on a treadmill, doing weightlifting, stuff like that. It’s great. It’s awesome. It doesn’t condition you for the ring. I love to weight lift. I love Olympic powerlifting. But I do that for my own aesthetic, and I like it as almost a hobby. For pro wrestling, the best conditioning and the best training for pro wrestling is pro wrestling and we work with — because there are mostly men that come to the dungeon I try to keep inviting the women to come. But there’s a lot of men that train with us in the dungeon some really great up and comers that I’m like, I know they’re going to be amazing in WWE one day or wherever they end up landing. But because we train with a lot of men, it also makes you really strong. You have to lift people of different body shapes and sizes. We have a guy there that’s around five feet, we’ve got somebody there at 6’3, we’ve got a person there that’s just started wrestling, one of TJ’s friends that’s been there for six months, all different skill levels, all different shapes, and sizes. It really teaches you like, ‘Okay, this is what it be like to work Doudrop, and maybe this is what it would feel like if I was working Sasha,’ and, ‘What if I’m a good guy? What if I’m a bad guy?’ In wrestling, you never know what role you’re going to be in.”
On how wrestlers’ biggest issue these days is with confidence: “I think the biggest thing, and I’ve heard Triple H say this. I think the biggest, biggest, biggest obstacle is confidence. So Triple H says when he’s at tryouts, he wants to like see who stands out above everyone else. I understand that now. Because now that we’re working with people, we have a friend that started training with us. I said to him, in the very beginning, his name is Khalil, and he’s only 20. But, he’s been a lifelong pro wrestling fan and he’s a friend of ours, he asked TJ to help him. But why bring him up is because he’s loved pro wrestling his whole life. But I felt like he was too shy. I was like, I don’t know if he has the ‘it factor’ and the confidence. Confidence is going to be what takes you to the top. That’s going to be what separates you from being a good athlete to being like, ‘damn, this person stands out.’ This person has that swagger. This person has that [the ability to] go from like, they were a great high school athlete to like, ‘I’m gonna pay money to go and see them,’ this person could Main Event WrestleMania.”
(h/t – Fightful)
