Jazz On Being ECW’s First Women’s Wrestler, How She Joined the Company, Her Training

She’s known by most for her WWE run, but Jazz got her start as a wrestler in ECW and discussed being that company’s first women’s wrestler on 411’s “My Big Break” with Gerry Strauss. Jazz joined ECW in mid-1999 and was competing in the ring as one of the Impact Players, staying with the company until it folded in 2001 when she signed with WWE. Jazz talked about how she ended up initially training to wrestle instead of the original plans to be a manager for Rodney Mack, and how she ultimately ended up joining ECW. You can check out highlights and the full video below:

On how she ended up trying out for ECW: “I trained for the Junkyard Dog for a little while. Rugged Rod Price came along and he told me that — I was focusing on being a manager, a valet. That’s what I thought I was gonna be. Because I was working with Rodney at the time, and I was just his valet. And Rod approached me and said, ‘If you wanna make money or make it in this business, you’re gonna have to wrestle.’ So I was like, ‘All right, let’s do it!’

“A couple of months into training, he had signed with ECW. And he kept telling us, you know, what was going on with ECW, and blah blah blah. I guess maybe four or five months later, he told us that they were having tryouts. They were gonna be doing a loop in Louisiana, and they were gonna have tryouts and Rodney and I oughta go over there and show them what they got. And basically, that’s what I did. Went over there, had a match with Jason Knight for my tryout match. It was kind of intimidating as hell, because the entire roster circled around the ring to watch our match.”

On being the only woman participating in the tryout: “I was the only woman there actually to do a tryout. So I did my match, nervous as hell. Rodney tells a story that a couple of guys walked up to him and was like, ‘Hey bruh, that’s your old lady?’ He was like, ‘Yeah.’ They was like, ‘Man, you need to get her out of that ring.’ He was like, ‘No, she’ll be okay.'”

On being offered a spot in ECW afterward: “So I did the damn thing, got the 1-2-3, ran my ass out of the ring, went to the nearest restroom and puked my guts out. Yeah. Didn’t realize who was sitting in the locker room, I had to go through the locker room to get into the restroom. And there was One Man Gang, Tommy Rogers, Sabu, I mean all the old hands sitting in there laughing at me.

“Meanwhile, Rodney comes in there and tells me to clean my face up because Paul E. was looking for me. Once I freshened my breath up a little bit, I went out there and got with Paul, and Paul was like ‘Man, where the hell did you come from? And that’s basically it. They reached out to me probably like a month later because Chastity was on her way out with Sandman to go to WCW. So they brought me in to take her out.”

On being ECW’s first women’s wrestler: “You know, I was too green to even realize what was going on. Had no clue. Just naïve to everything, just as green as they come. No idea.”

On if there was any resistance to her training or being in ECW because she was a woman: “No, no. Not at all. I mean, I’m sure maybe someone had a little something to say, but no. No one ever approached me with it. For one, I never griped and complained about anything. Whatever they told me to go out there and do, I did it. And I mean, I took everyone’s damn finisher in that company too, so. [laughs] As they said, I earned my spot!”

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