Isla Dawn Hopes BT Studios Can Become NXT UK’s Full Sail

In an interview with Inside the Ropes, Isla Dawn spoke about WWE’s move to BT Studios for their NXT UK tapings and how she wants it to become their version of Full Sail. Here are highlights:

On NXT UK’s move to BT Studios: “It’s perfect. That’s what I hope it’s going to be, going forward, is our version of Full Sail, somewhere that we can call a permanent home, because it’s the most unreal space. We were all sharing photos of it on our phones before we managed to get in and we got great feedback with people saying it looked amazing. Then when we walked into the studio, it blew any expectations we had out of the water. It was beautiful, it’s just such a great thing. It looks great on TV and it feels like such a nice home for everybody. Hopefully this is somewhere we can be long term, get fans in eventually and make it even more special than it is right now.”

On watching wrestling as a kid: “I remember when I used to go to shows and I must have been like ten or something. It was like 2004-2005. Even then, I remember seeing Drew and he was heads and shoulders above everybody. He looked like an absolute superstar when he was still doing independent shows in places like Bellshill. Even then, he was always someone that I remembered and stuck in my mind. I stopped going to live shows for a while but I always remembered Drew. Then he got signed and it seemed so wild for a Scottish person to be able to achieve that. We had such a small Scottish wrestling scene and for someone to have broken out of it and exceeded that expectation of what a Scottish wrestler could do.”

On Drew McIntyre: “He smashed through so many barriers and then even when he came back to the Independent scene, he smashed through the barriers of what you can achieve once he leaves WWE. He never went down the route of, ‘I’m not going to try as hard. I’m just gonna do signings.’ He became the best independent wrestler again. Then he came back and became the best in WWE today. He just constantly breaks down every single expectation. I think that’s just a massive inspiration for everybody. I feel that at one point, it was almost like you felt like he was THE Scottish person in WWE, it’s almost a god-like thing of, like, he was the only one that was going to be able to do that – but I think he opened the doors for so many people and now we can all follow in his footsteps and hope to achieve that same thing.”