Ahead of her upcoming NWA World's Women's Championship Match at Sunday's NWA Alwayz Ready event, former AEW Dark and Dark: Elevation regular KiLynn King discussed her time wrestling in AEW. Check out the highlights below.
On conversations with Billy Gunn:
“I’ve had many conversations with Billy Gunn and a couple of other people who recruit for Dark, I was like, ‘Hey, I love you guys, but I gotta go off and do my own thing for now.’ So the door is still open. Like I said, I talked with Billy Gunn, he’s like ‘That door is open. I’ll always make sure it’s open.’ But right now I think I’m just on a journey trying to create my own stardom because I started with AEW when nobody really knew who I was. I was only about two / three years in [from] actually debuting on the independents. So while I was getting a lot of recognition while I was at AEW, I really still was nobody. Right now it’s the point in my career where I’ve got to make people understand, like ‘Okay, I was a nobody, but I’m going to become somebody and we’ll just see where I end up.’ Cause everybody’s on their own journey. Everybody has different desires and expectations for what they want to see in their career and what they want to become as a performer and as a wrestler. If you go to a company and that spot isn’t there for you at that current time, there’s no shame in saying, ‘Hey, I need to go somewhere else where I can [get myself] to that level.’ Sometimes you gotta go somewhere else to build yourself up to that level. That way if your journey comes full circle and you go back to that company, they can go, ‘Alright, now you’re ready for that spot.’ Sometimes they have different visions than you have and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
On winning an AEW Dark contest:
“I’m still not really sure how that came about, like who made those decisions and stuff like that. But I know that there was a lot of people when I was there, and still wherever I go, I always pride myself—I don’t like to put myself over that much because its just a matter of branding and doing the work—but when I was there, especially I was a workhorse. I was always backstage by the board waiting, ‘Hey, what can I do? You have another thing for me? Okay, cool.’ I wanted to work. I wanted to learn. I wanted to make money. It was business. I was there to work. It was one of those things where I just put my head down and I was doing everything that I had to do to get better and get more eyes on me. I think it was Dustin who came up to me—‘cause I had just had my match with Britt Baker on Dynamite and I was still on a high from that, I was like, ‘Ahh, I got to be on Dynamite against Britt,’ they were building her up, it was a really cool moment,” King continued. “Then he came up to me. He’s like, ‘We got a match for you tonight. You’re gonna go against Lei’D Tapa.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, they want to see Lei’D Tapa,’ and all that stuff. He was like, ‘We’re gonna put you over.’ I was like, ‘What?’ It was really, really cool. I didn’t expect it to keep happening, but it did.”
