Former WWE Star and current IMPACT Wrestling Star Taya Valkyrie recently spoke with Steve Fall at NBC Sports Boston on a number of topics such as how Warrior Award recipient and pro wrestling legend Shad Gaspard got her into wrestling.
Taya Valkyrie said:
“I had already been competing in fitness for a really long time. I had already had the idea of being a wrestler and everything like that. It was a few weeks before I won the Canadian National fitness competition. I was really lean, super spray tanned, and dressed like a female John Cena at a live event. They ended up coming into where I worked. We were having a wrestling night theme because WWE was in town. My manager knew that I was always talking about wanting to be a wrestler, so he brought them directly to me. Shad was like, ‘You look like a wrestler. You want to be a wrestler?’, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, yes, but I don’t know how I’m gonna be a wrestler.’ It was just a weird, coincidental thing.”
“I was also working as a personal trainer. So the next day, they all came to Gold’s Gym where I worked and I got them in for free and whatever. But I remember Shad asked me for, like pics, eight by 10s of me, or something that he could hand to talent relations. I printed off these awful quality fitness pictures of myself and put them in a little envelope. Honestly, WWE ended up calling me a few weeks later. I had like a few phone conversations, but nothing really came of it.”
“Then I did the Arnold Amateur the following spring, and then I was invited to come for a tryout after that. So that was prior to me even training with Lance Storm prior to any of that. Then it was after that try out that they’re like, ‘We really like your look, we like this about you, but maybe you should like to try to get some training’, and I was like, ‘Okay’. I was already living in Calgary so they pointed me in the direction of Lance Storm, and then yeah, here we are.”
You can check out Taya Valkyrie's full comments in the video below. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
