Natalya is honored to be a mentor in the women's locker room.
At the age of 40, many fans would argue that Natalya is already a guaranteed WWE Hall Of Famer. Natalya not only has the most wins out of any female performer in WWE History, but she also has two women's championship reigns to her name, along with a Women's Tag Team Championship reign.
Natalya is also one of the longest tenured competitors in WWE's women's locker room, as she has been with the company since 2008. In a new interview with Darren Stone, Natalya discussed competing in multiple different eras of women's wrestling.
"I’m very lucky that I’ve had the experience and the career that I’ve had, having grown up in the industry and having done so much in the industry. I started WWE right when the Attitude Era was just going away. All of the sudden it was like this Ugly Duckling phase, I don’t wanna say the Divas Division was an Ugly Duckling phase, but we were just transitioning from this really bad-ass Attitude Era to all of the sudden being told that we weren’t allowed to be called women wrestlers or superstars or anything, we had to be called divas. It wasn’t necessarily a bad term, you know Beyoncé and Diana Ross and J-Lo, those are women that are loved to be called divas. It was a very unique time where women’s wrestling wasn’t celebrated. We weren’t there yet. The company wasn’t there yet, they didn’t really want women’s wrestling yet. For me, that was tough because my strengths were really in the ring. So, I kind of came into the company at an awkward phase.”
Natalya went on to talk about how some women in the current day women's locker room look up to her as a sounding board or somebody that they can get advice from.
"Then saw the Women’s Evolution in WWE many years later. About seven years after I got hired, we all of the sudden saw that [women were beginning to be celebrated]. They want women who know what they’re doing, they want women that can wrestle. We saw a lot of that at NXT where we saw the rise of Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Bayley just to name a few. Women’s wrestling was really being celebrated. So for me, I think a lot of the women look to me as a sounding board or somebody that they can turn to because I’ve just been through so much in the company [including] the good, the bad, and everything in between. I feel like they know that I’m reliable, solid, and dependable and that they can get good advice from me. I’m always very honored and flattered by that."
Elsewhere in the interview, Natalya predicted that Evolution 2 will happen underneath the new WWE regime. To learn more, click here.
Recently, Natalya revealed that she received treatment for a nose injury that she suffered on the November 4 edition of WWE SmackDown. To learn more, click here.
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