In the first women’s main event match in WrestleMania history, Becky Lynch defeated RAW Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey and SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair in a ‘Winner Takes All’ Triple Threat Match at WrestleMania 35.
On a recent edition of the “Insight” podcast, Lynch looked back at winning both titles at WrestleMania 35. While Rousey didn’t tap out to Lynch’s Dis-Arm-Her, The Man eventually pinned her to become a double champion.
On Ronda Rousey not tapping out: “I was in the moment. I couldn’t see it. The discourse afterwards, and also the sound of the audience made it seem like something had gone wrong. Obviously, I wasn’t aware. I don’t know if that was intentional or accidental. I could see the motivation for it being intentional. ‘This will be my out to get a second match’ in the long game or it just being accidental. With a pinfall. Not with a shoulder up, but with a pinfall. That was the creative laid out. She had, her driver had taken her to the wrong spot, so she showed up like an hour…we had been talking through stuff. TJ Wilson, our producer, an amazing producer, he was like, ‘Maybe you have Ronda in armbar, she looks like she’s about to tap out,’ Ronda comes and we tell her the creative, ‘You’re almost about to tap out.’ ‘My mom wouldn’t look me in the eye or talk to me again if I looked like I was about to tap out.’ ‘Alright, well, she’s probably not going to tap out on the finish then.’ She never tapped out in her career. Understood it, respected it, and moved on quickly. I was going to win, I was going to win two titles in the main event of WrestleMania. It was not a big deal whether she tapped out or not. I was winning and she was doing the honors.”
On the most difficult parts to write about in her book: “Anything with WWE I thought needed to be handled with great care. Because I don’t think you can absent-mindedly write about people that are in the public eye. You have to have a good representation of them and an accurate representation of them. And so I wanted to detail everything very honestly, very factually, without letting my bias come into play. Like when was I the a**hole? I need to own that. Let me try and see the other person’s point of view because these people are in the public eye and you want to represent them in the way that is most honest. And here’s another thing that Mick Foley told me, never use a book to get back at anybody. Like, never use it as a revenge tool, they don’t have the chance to defend themselves. And I took that as I’m going to be the hero of my own story, right? If you’re reading this, I’m likely painting myself as the hero of my story. It’s not fair for me to paint anybody as a villain, especially somebody who doesn’t have the chance to respond. So I really wanted to handle all of that stuff with care.”
On WWE having a hot product right now: “I think it is the leadership that we have right now and that things are thought out. Because it was no secret that before the show would be rewritten as it was going on. I talked about it in the book. It wasn’t unheard of for them to have a show on paper and we’d show up and Vince would tear it up and we’d start from scratch and then at 6 pm your creative changes. And then you’re like, oh, okay, well, what are we doing? And it didn’t always play off of what we had done last week. Now with Hunter in charge, he has a vision. He sees it through and that’s what you need for a TV show. You don’t start filming Succession episode one without knowing where you’re going in episode five. So I think that’s been a huge change. And then the reins are off a little bit in terms of letting people have a bit more freedom to try things out. See if things work, see if they don’t and have a conversation there. I think that just makes a world of a difference.”
Lynch’s new book, “Becky Lynch: The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl,” is currently available on Amazon.
