Ayesha Raymond Recalls Being Part of 2017 Mae Young Classic, Being a Black Woman in Wrestling

Ayesha Raymond spoke with Post Wrestling for a new interview discussing her experience in the 2017 Mae Young Classic, being a black woman in the industry and more.

On being a black woman the wrestling industry: “It was interesting because as you know, there aren’t that many of us. When it comes to wrestling, it’s a cultural thing, it’s a parent thing — my parents are Caribbean, and no one wants to be a wrestler so, my mom always pushed us to accomplish our dreams but when it comes to black people in terms of careers and jobs and opportunities, you always aspire for your child to be a doctor or a nurse or a lawyer. I went to my mom and said I want to slam people for a living. I always wanted to be an entertainer. She pushed me to do drama schools and performing arts and I was always into art and music, but when I told her I wanted to be a wrestler, she said the same thing I found out. ‘There’s not gonna be many people like you’ and there weren’t. I was the first of then what became many, and as much as you can look back at history and see it, there weren’t that many of us. It was myself and Amarah the Voodoo Queen, and I carved the way now as Amazon and its opened the door for so many other shiny new faces.”

On her experiences with Kyoko and Hana Kimura: “When I went out to STARDOM and I met Kimura-san, Hana was very young so I only had very few interactions with her and again, my condolences to the family and friends. But, my experiences with [Kyoko] Kimura, she definitely taught me how to be more violent in the most safest way. But she opened more doors for me in terms of the Japanese entertainment and how they present things and how they are able to make things exciting, safe and kind of chaotic at the same time, which is why when I came back, most people were afraid.”

On the World of Sport tapings for ITV: “Mate, I was in Japan. We did the tapings, and I went to Japan. Most of the social media stuff I was doing, I was doing from my apartment in Japan. When I came back, I got told off. I got told about the tour that was supposed to be happening. Some things led to another and there was no Amazon on tour. But as far as I’m concerned, it was something that happened, I’m grateful for the opportunity but… I don’t know. It’s COVID, I’ll say it — they shouldn’t have let the inmates run the asylum and it would’ve been fine. That’s all I’m saying.”

On being in the 2017 Mae Young Classic: “Like I said at the beginning, the whole story of Amazon is the story of a kid accomplishing their dream. I gave the story in the Mae Young Classic about my brother. My brother is blind. We did grow up watching wrestling. But that was me. I was a baby born at 20 weeks, I was two pounds, they gave me all the food, I got bigger and I wasn’t supposed to live. Everything that has ever happened to me in my life and everything that I’ve gone through was collectively justified in that one moment, because it’s what I watched when I was little, it’s what I stayed up on Friday nights to watch, what I woke up on Saturday mornings to watch. These people that I’m working around who have given me advice, people that I’ve idolized since I was little. So, the entire experience alone was breathtaking. I got to basically stand in an arena that I had been making on SmackDown vs. RAW for God knows how long, and the character that I had been making, it was in the ring for real.”