Natalya Praises Maxxine Dupri’s Work Ethic: ‘She’s Trying To Grow’

Natalya says she’s impressed by Maxxine Dupri’s dedication to improving herself in the ring. The WWE veteran weighed in on Dupri and more in her appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show, and you can see the highlights below (per Fightful):

On Dupri: “First of all, I have so much respect for Maxxine. She is very hard-working. On her days off, she’s training, she’s going to several different schools, she’s trying to learn, she’s going to the Performance Center. Of course, she didn’t have a wrestling background. She wasn’t on the independents. So she is trying to learn. She’s trying to grow. But for me, to be brutally honest, I do have to be careful about just aligning myself with anyone because think about how many tag team partners I’ve had in the past. That’s also because I’ve been in WWE for so long. Two decades. Of course I’m going to have a lot of tag team partners. But I really want to be careful as far as moving forward, what I do and who I’m aligned with, and that everybody has the same sort of vision that I do, which is greatness. I do not want to do anything that’s mediocre. I want to do things that are great. So that’s the thing, I’m ready to do great work. I think Maxxine is totally capable of doing great work, but it’s going to take time for me to really align myself with anyone because of having so many different tag team partners.”

On of there’s any of her work she isn’t proud of: “I think, especially because growing up in the business and this is, to be brutally honest, growing up in the business with a parent like Jim ‘The Anvil’ Neidhart, my dad is one of my greatest inspirations in my life. But growing up, my dad lost his job a lot. So for me, I always I think subconsciously, even before I ever got to WWE, I always had this fear of, I have to make everyone happy. I have to please everyone. I have to be the company girl, I have to be everything that my dad wasn’t. I have to be perfect. So whatever Vince wants me to do or whatever my boss wants me to do, I just have to do what they want me to do. So sometimes, when you’re trying to be perfect for everyone else, you can lose yourself. I’m not playing victim or anything, but for sometimes, for example, I didn’t necessarily want to pass gas in a storyline, but that was what was asked of me at that time.

“So for me, I was just trying to be like, ‘Yes, whatever you guys need, even if I don’t like it, I’m going to try to make it fantastic.’ So sometimes, when those things don’t work out, you can compromise the integrity of your character, and it takes a little bit to kind of get that back. I just feel like now, with the storylines and the way that the company’s being run, everything is being so much more well thought out, and I feel like it’s such a great opportunity for me to really do what I always wanted to do, which is tell great stories and just be great. That’s exciting to me.”