Kacy Catanzaro on Developing Her Unique In-Ring Style, Her Dynamic With Kayden Carter

– ComicBook.com interviewed NXT Superstar Kacy Catanzaro ahead of last night’s NXT. Catanzaro and her tag team partner, Kayden Carter, were knocked out of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic tournament on NXT this week after losing to Dakota Kai and Raquel Gonzalez in the semifinals. Below are some highlights.

Kacy Catanzaro on her in-ring style: “Oh, man. I mean, I think there’s so much of an evolution of your mindset when you’re thinking of what you can do in the ring. I know that for me coming in, I always try and be different because I didn’t come from a wrestling background. I didn’t come from the indies. So I’m like, ‘What can I bring here that’s different?’ and that’s the experience that I had when I wasn’t…when other people were wrestling on the indies, I was in gymnastics. I was in collegiate gymnastics doing that. I was on American Ninja Warrior on the obstacle course. So how can I bring that to be different and bring something new?’ I think that that’s where it comes in, kind of with my spider monkey stuff and with the handstands and with the flexibility and things like that, where it’s really cool, for example, in the Rumble, where I was able to do the handstand spot and the sit-up and everything. That was cool for me because Naomi and Kofi have always been inspirations. I’d watch them and I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s so different. I want to do something so different as well.'”

On the praise she gets for her spots in the Royal Rumble: “To be able to look up to them and now have people when Rumble time of the year comes along and people are putting Kofi and Naomi and me in the same sentence, that’s crazy to me. You know what I mean? I’ve looked up to both of them and for people to now put all three of us, and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, people are thinking of me in the same moment that they’re thinking of them.’ That is just a dream come true for me. I admire both of them so much, now both of them, Naomi and Kofi, come to me and say they liked my spot and that’s so cool and they want to do something. I’m like, wow, that’s a really cool feeling to feel like I’ve been able to make that impact on the wrestling world in a way that, when that time of year comes along, people think of that, I think that that’s really cool.”

Kacy Catanzaro on her partnership with Kayden Carter: “It’s so funny because Kayden always jokes, she’s like, ‘We were not meant to be together in this.’ It just happened. This was not how it was supposed to be. Because when I was at an NXT, Kayden came a little bit after me, and her first live show was a tag team with me. We were at a live event in Florida, and someone was like, ‘Okay, we want a bunch of women out there, let’s get a tag team,’ and it happened to put me and Kayden together,” Catanzaro said. “And when we were out there, we were like, ‘Wait a second, we are really good together.’ And we have this weird balance where people say we have a similar move set and people call Kayden a high flyer and she laughs. She’s like, ‘I am not a high flyer,’ but she has that Lucha background. She has that good mind for everything too where she does things people don’t do and I do things people don’t do, so we put them together and that’s a really good balance in the ring.”

On what it was like when they first met: “Outside of the ring, she always says that when we first met, I was too nice for her. She just got to the performance center. I’m like, ‘Whatever you need. If you need anything, let me know.’ And she’s just like, ‘You were so nice, I didn’t know what to do with you. And then you kind of grew on me.’ We kind of balance each other out. Where I used to kind of reign her in, she’s helped me really branch out of that box I felt I was in, come more into myself, more of my aggressive side, and now she kind of reels me in.”