Lyra Valkyria reflects on her first wrestling training session.
For many pro wrestlers, the story of how they came to find themselves at their first wrestling training session has been shared over the years, and now, WWE Women's Intercontinental Champion Lyra Valkyria has shared her experience.
While speaking to Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Lyra looked back on deciding to go to her first wrestling training session.
"Honestly, I don't think I went, I can go do that. It was one of those things where I was watching Raw super late, because it starts at 1 am and I was again, down the rabbit hole. Where can I go to do this? I was looking at who's in the club? I was not very outgoing. I was very, very shy. So if I started something, I needed a friend to go with me and that kind of thing. I was never the one. I was the quiet friend, I think. I was always a bit awkward, but this was the one thing that I was like, if I go, I'll just do it. I even considered giving a fake name so that if it goes really badly, no one has to know about it, and my friends would never find out anything like that. It must have been 3 am, and I was on my phone looking it up, I kind of just went, I'm just going to do this. It was actually a Saturday night, and I was up watching wrestling, and I went I'm just going to go tomorrow. Because if I put down my phone right now, go to sleep, and I say, maybe I'll do this next week. I won't. It was just one of those freak things that I was like, just get up and go, and it turned my whole life around. That one little decision to just try something really did change my life. Because it sounds like it's just something to say, but it really did. I decided that day that good or bad, that's what I'm gonna do. So yeah, that one decision to try something changed everything."
Lyra was then asked if she remembers her first wrestling training session, with Valkyria reflecting on the fact she met her fiancé and fellow pro wrestler LJ Cleary on her first day.
"I don't remember the session very well. I remember the pain the next day, and I remember running around in a circle with the few guys that were outside. I met my fiancé that very first day as well. He was the first person I ever met. Shook my hand outside the gym."
Elsewhere in the same interview, Valkyria looked back on tearing her ACL during her time in NXT UK. You can read more about that here.
