It may seem like years ago now, but it was really only three months ago that Becky Lynch was feuding with MMA star Ronda Rousey over the Raw Women’s Championship, and there was a lot of discussion about who would win in a “real fight,” which is the sort of stupid thing wrestling fans argue about even though it has nothing to do with wrestling. Anyway, while Becky may lack Ronda’s MMA experience, she has been known to train at an MMA gym, and in a recent interview with Ariel Helwani, Coach John Kavanagh was asked his opinions about the Man. Kavanagh, Conor McGregor’s coach, had nothing but praise for Lynch.
…She drops in, she’s very gracious with her time. We have a big kids’ club and they’re all insane about her, have The Man T-Shirts. And she’ll drop in. When I do a training session with her, I have to be saying, “Okay, make your way out the back door because you’re gonna get caught.” She’ll say, “No,” goes goes out the front. She’ll stay there an hour, takes photographs with everybody, chat with everybody. She’s a real inspiration for the young girls, of what someone can do. She’s a fantastic athlete. I challenge anybody to out-work her.
While Kavanagh doesn’t see any reason to think Becky Lynch is interested in MMA, he thinks she could be great at it if she decided to give it a shot.
If she were to say to me tomorrow, “You know what, I want to give MMA a go,” give me a year and I’d have her fighting at a high level. No doubt. She has an engine and she’s tough as hell. We know what that is, what she does, but you get smacked around and take big hits. That’s a big part of this game, to have the mental toughness and physical toughness to do it. She’s very fit, she’s a great performer. We know she’s not going to freeze under the big lights. She would do very well.
Becky seems like someone who’s determined enough to succeed at most things she tries, but her acting background is such a big part of her wrestling career that it’s hard to imagine that she’d get as much enjoyment out of a sport where reality is meant to be objective rather than created from moment to moment.
(Thanks to 411Mania for the transcript from Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show.)
