During a recent interview with Pwinsider, AEW Women’s Champion Thunder Rosa commented on raising money for the Uvalde school shooting victims (donate here), who she’d like to face next in AEW, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On raising money for the Uvalde victims: “Well, first of all, thank you so much for being so open to help us out and spreading the word of this. It’s been hard and one of my very close friends who, she works with me, her name is Melanie, she actually knows a couple of the people that lost their kids. Unfortunately, this last Sunday, I was going to one of the funerals of the young girls that passed away. I wasn’t able to because I was sick, but I talked to her and she says that was probably one of the saddest moments she’s ever had, you know, dealing with the family. All the communities involved, a very small community and everyone knows each other. So this guy that is a friend of hers, he’s a wrestling fan and he was a DJ for one of the local promotions over there in Uvalde and he just said it was like, it broke your heart. She’s like, ‘I don’t think I cried so much, just like how sad it was to see this father, he lost one of his daughters and he still has four kids and one of them was at the school when this happened.’ So it’s just so tragic because there’s stories that are so similar with all the families and those families that you know fortunately, they still have their kids, but the kids were present during the time of the shooting. How much trauma will exist in the next…after this? So it’s like, how is like a community going to rebuild after this? The beautiful part of this is a lot of people from all over the world and from all over the country have come and supported in different ways. I was just reading an article in The New York Times about mariachis that came from different parts of the country to play for the family. Just like bring them some sort of happiness or comfort when they were playing the music. It’s been rough…I mean, I know it’s just, you know, like in nowadays, like if something happened yesterday and like tomorrow, we forget, like this is something that people can’t forget. There were so many kids and so many adults affected. That is going to be hard to forget and for me, when I was at Double or Nothing, like when I first came up [with the idea], I was coming with the idea that I was going to represent women that have disappeared in Mexico, there’s so many similarities, right? This might not have to do with the shooting but it was it was something that I wanted to do and then the shooting happened, I was like, well, this is my community. That same week, I went to talk to like elementary school kids about how school is like one of the safest place for so many kids. Now like that’s just taken away. So I don’t know, it’s just it’s really really sad.”
On when she got the idea: “I think it was right after it happened. Everything was already made. And I didn’t have any, you know, desire to like auction off anything and then that happened and I just made some connections with local reporters, and she posted something that they were raising money for the families and I went and like texted her like do the families need any money for the funerals and she’s like, no the funerals are paid for but we’re raising money for the expenses that are going come afterwards. So she gives me a couple of things, and then I was like, oh my god, maybe we should auction off the gear. So it was like, that was the idea and I said, I’m going to write Uvalde on the heart so people know when I’m coming that I’m remembering the community of Uvalde. So that’s how it happened…the importance of this gear again, it’s like everything was made by hand. Everything, I think, shows just like, again, it was a community of people that came together and helped me bring this to life. I want whoever, you know, wins the auction, I want them to understand that this is so important for me because everything that I have done in my career is kind of like a community effort, I have a group of people that are always like, behind me, they’re always supporting me, and that has helped me to get where I need to get, and this is no difference now like the community here in Texas state and Uvalde, San Antonio, like we’re all getting together to continue to help these families cause they’re going to need it for many, many years.”
On who she wants to wrestle next in AEW: “There’s a couple, definitely. I would like to wrestle Jaime Hayter. She’s such a hard hitter, it’s always a pleasure to be in the ring with her. Kris Statlander, I have not been able to wrestle her ever since I got to AEW. I would love to wrestle her. There’s so many – Athena, Toni Storm, Ruby Soho. I would love to have a couple of weeks with her, I think she’s such a great heel. And I would love to wrestle Allie and have a good storyline with her. There’s like so there’s so many.”
On her match with Serena Deeb: “I felt really, really well through the match. When we were done, I hugged Serena and I said, “We did it,” you know, like, you don’t get to see women like us performing for 17 minutes in such a hot crowd and like, people were so invested when you don’t have like super high spots and like flips and everything was just like pure wrestling and good storytelling. I really feel it went really well. It was that way for both of us, I think it was a great accomplishment. During the build up, there were criticisms of what we’re trying to say and show, and when we went out there and wrestled, everybody was like, ‘Wow, this looks great, I wish they would have wrestled one more time.’”
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