Natalya loves seeing the growth.
Natalya is one of the longest-tenured members of the WWE roster, and the veteran has been working with younger talent in NXT in recent weeks. She has been feuding with Lola Vice, and she has mixed it up with other up-and-comers as well.
In an interview with The Wrestling Classic, Natalya commented on how Total Divas brought in new fans and highlighted the importance of building characters. She then highlighted how Shawn Michaels and the NXT have been doing that with the talent there.
"What we did on [Total Divas] that was so important is, we were able to show people what our personalities were like and build characters. That’s what I love about NXT so much. I have to give Shawn Michaels and Matt Bloom and the team there at NXT so much credit. They have a team of writers, coaches and producers and faculty that work together to basically build talent from the ground up and find something special inside people that they may never have known that they had. But they build characters," Natalya said.
Natalya went on to note that she was impressed with the amount of women that were utilized on NXT TV, and they were given characters and put in storylines. The veteran stated that she was excited by their growth, and she made it clear that she was impressed. She also highlighted some of the talent that stood out to her.
"I said the other day to Shawn Michaels, I said I can’t believe how many women are used on the show, like 18 women are used on the show every week, and not only are they used on the show, they’re building characters, they’re in storylines, and they’re thriving, they’re excited, they’re challenged, they’re motivated, they’re driven, they’re hungry. You watch them, from week-to-week, grow. Even just the growth that I saw in Lola from the first time that I worked with her until this huge Underground match that we had, it was so cool because that’s what excites me about wrestling is what Shawn Michaels is doing with talent at NXT is helping them grow, he’s helping them evolve, he’s helping them build characters and stories. When you have characters and you have stories, it’s what gets people excited about watching a match. We were able to do promos and we were able to build this match through stories, and I just love it. I really admire what Shawn has done down there, as far as cultivating that and building it. It’s so cool, it’s well-done, and I love it. I can’t say enough about how great the women are doing at NXT. It just makes me so proud to be a part of it because I’m even getting into the characters where I walk up to Santino’s daughter, Bianca [Arianna Grace]. I’ll walk up to her and be like, I just love your character, it’s so fun, it’s so entertaining, and I love what you’re doing with Gigi [Dolin], and I think Gigi has such a fun vibe about her, and I love Jacy Jayne’s heel character and how she’s great on the mic. There’s so many girls here that I want to work with. Just seeing them thrive…another woman that I really want to work with is Lyra. Lyra has been coming down to our dungeon. Months ago, she was coming down and training with us and working with us. She is so talented and so passionate. I want to work with Blair [Davenport]. I know Blair’s on SmackDown. But Kiana [James], I love that she had such great training at Flatbacks and then she really turned it up a notch through all the work at NXT. So I just love seeing the growth. I love seeing how people are developing and evolving and they’re taking their work and they’re building with it. That’s what the business is all about is growing," Natalya said.
During the interview, Natalya said that she felt like she was doing the best work of her career. Check out her comments here.
Natalya is set to compete on the May 21 episode of WWE NXT. Fightful will have coverage of the show as it airs, as well as a post-show podcast on our YouTube channel.
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