"Your Hero" Airica Demia reflects on beginning her heroic journey at such a young age.
Goku, Dick Grayson, The Legend of Zelda's Link, and Billie Starkz. All these names are top-tier heroes, both real and fictional, who began their journies at a young age.
"Your Hero" Airica Demia, with the support of her father, The Legend of Solar, began her wrestling journey when she was just 14 years old. Speaking with Sean Ross Sapp at WrestleCade, Demia reflected on being only 7 years old when she made the decision to start training and the hurdles she's faced along the way
"Right, so I was seven when I first decided that I wanted to wrestle and he was like, ‘Airica, absolutely not. You are so clumsy.’ Recently he was like, ‘Yes, it was because you were clumsy, but it was also because I know how this business is with women.’ But I kept begging and when I was 14, he finally let me get in the ring and he started training me a little bit. He was like, ‘You’re a natural. Do you want to keep doing this?’ I was like, ‘Yes.’"
With time, she has grown her understanding of what works inside the squared circle and now she feels as though she could be a better mentor to new trainees.
"With the developing before everybody else, it’s a yes and no thing. You know things, but you don’t understand them completely because your brain’s not fully developed when you’re 14 years old. So I could tell people what I had been told, but I didn’t know what it meant. I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t teach it to somebody, but I can now. As you get older and as you’ve been there longer, it gets a lot easier. I’m also an adult and not a literal child now," she said.
Of course, when you start training at the age of 14 there will be some who are hesitant to work with you. Demia reflected on some of those hesitant training partners as well.
"Pretty much everybody. There would be days where we would move a certain move and they wouldn’t let me give it or take it because they were like, ‘Uh, you’re a 14-year-old girl. You weigh 100 pounds. Absolutely not.’ I was like, ‘That’s not fair.’ Like, I kind of understand it, but it’s not fair," she said. "See, when I was little I didn’t know WWE existed. I only knew the company that my dad worked for, which was a very small indy place in Lincolnton, North Carolina. It doesn’t exist anymore. It hasn’t existed since 2020 ‘cause the pandemic shut it all down. But, yeah, so I didn’t really know anything like that. My dad started training when he was 18 or 19."
Demia is still continuing to advance in her career. She recently competed on the December 12 episode of NWA Powerrr, coming up short in a Triple Threat that was won by Taylor Rising.
Fans can follow the journey of "Your Hero" Airica Demia on Twitter and Instagram. Also, keep up with her career on YouTube.
Check out the full interview embedded above.
