It’s been too long, ladies and gents. Finally, we have new Stone Cold Podcast to talk about, and the guest this time was women’s wrestling revolutionary Paige. I saw a few eyebrows raised online when she was announced as the guest, but, if I had to guess, I’d say those are probably the people who aren’t aware of Paige’s already lengthy wrestling career. Here are some of the most interesting points of conversation from Tough Enough’s most aggressive judge.
- On cursing in the ring: “Yeah, I do it in the ring… If a girl catches me or whatever, I’ll drop an f-bomb… and then I’m like, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not trying to have a go at you.'”
- On being born into wrestling: “It’s just like a family business. My dad has his own company. But yeah, growing up I was completely petrified and scared of wrestling altogether. It scared me because I grew up and I saw the injuries that these guys have, and I didn’t get to see [my family] very often because they were away all the time.”
- On taking bumps before she was born: “Robbie Brookside, he’s down in NXT, he gave me my first bump. He gorilla pressed my mum when she was seven months pregnant. She’s a small lady, so you just couldn’t tell… He gorilla pressed my mum onto my dad on the outside, and, after that, she was like, ‘Wow, I don’t feel very good.’ She went to the doctor, and he was like, ‘Well, do you want the good news or the bad news? You’re knocked up.'”
- On her time as an unofficial bouncer: “One day, my mum and dad were in there tending the bar, but these two chicks were fighting near the fruit machine and no one was there, so I ran up to this woman, grabbed her in a headlock, and did a headlock takeover and took her down. And then this other woman tried to come at me, and I grabbed her and put her in a headlock, so I’m sitting on one’s head and I’ve got the other one in a headlock…”
- On wrestlers coming to her house when she was young: “Jake the Snake lived with us for a while. It was the wildest thing. Te was so sweet… But yeah, I got to meet Yokozuna, I got to meet the Bushwhackers, Greg ‘The Hammer’ Valentine, I got to meet all these people. It was awesome. I loved it.”
- On coming back from being rejected after her first WWE tryout: “Johnny Ace actually managed to get me a second tryout… it was only six months later, but I came back and I was like, ‘Well, I’m going to come back as myself. If they don’t like it, fine. But I’m not going to try to be something I’m not. I refuse.’ So, I come back with dark hair, piercings, black clothes… the ones who were running the tryout were actually Jamie Noble and Goldust.”
- On Dusty Rhodes: “I moved across the world, and I was by myself at 18. Dusty was so sweet, and he took me in… He spent a lot of time with me. I was his ‘princess.'”
- On her father’s toughness: “I got hit by a car one day… I was bleeding everywhere, it was coming out of my ears… I just fall down like something out of the zombie apocalypse, just scraping myself to the front door… My dad was like, ‘Can you wiggle your toes?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ And he says, ‘Alright, get ready. We have a show to do today.'”
- On Triple H’s role in the progression of the women’s wrestlers: “I feel like Triple H was definitely the one that started it, when it comes to NXT… He gave us opportunities like, ‘Hey, you’re going to have 20 minutes for this NXT match.’ And we’re just like, ‘What? That’s great!'”
- On Sara Del Rey and other coaches at NXT: “I actually worked with her on the indies. Not in a match, but we worked on the same shows. So, having her in there and teaching the girls not just a ‘Diva’ way of wrestling, but a man’s way of wrestling, too… Fit Finlay, too, Dean Malenko… I actually go to Dean a lot nowadays. I’ll go up to him and talk about a lot of stuff.”
- On her Tough Enough reputation: “I feel like I definitely helped Sara Lee. Yeah, I was very, very tough on her the first two days, but my parents did that to me. And they’d do it to other people, too… I was mean to her, I was saying stuff, but it wasn’t incorrect stuff. I was saying mean stuff that was right.”
- On meeting Daniel Bryan: “I met him back in 2003… He sees my dad and my brother dangling this guy out a window by his feet. They were like four stories in the air.”
- On her alcohol choices: “I drink beer and whiskey… I drink Bulleit. I also drink Jack [Daniels] and Maker’s Mark. And then, beer… I drink Purple Haze, Bud Light, Budweiser, I drink any beer. I’m a big beer enthusiast.”
New idea for a Tough Enough challenge: Shot-for-shot drinking duel against Paige. I don’t know how they do it, but every English person I’ve known has ridiculous tolerance for booze. Anyway, I know I’m in the minority here (at least among the people in the comments section), but I absolutely love her tactics on Tough Enough. It’s a show of monkey bars and almost-catfights, so her refusal to keep it no less than 100 percent real is welcome. She just needs to haul off and clock Miz right in the face, and she’s a front-runner for an Emmy.
