Nyla Rose Reflects on What AEW Women’s Title Match Meant To Her, Helping Build the AEW Brand

– Nyla Rose spoke with the Women’s Wrestling Weekly podcast discussing her match with Riho for the inaugural AEW Women’s Title on the first episode of Dynamite and more. You can check out some highlights below along with the full video:

On how she prepared for her match with Riho: “Well, there’s a lot to unpack right there. But for those who don’t know me, or not as familiar with me, I have spent some time in Japan working with Joshi Style and it wasn’t exactly completely foreign to me, so to speak, but definitely after having been in the states for some time, having to kind of like go back and do some tape study on myself and do tape study on Rhio, and kind of shift gears a little bit in order to just be able to match her…cause she’s a squirmy, little speedy spry…”

On what the match meant to her: “It meant everything honestly. You know, till this point in my career, that’s probably the biggest thing I’ve ever done, you know. Being crowned a world champion that’s no small feat. To be crowned, the first world champion, especially in a new blossoming, blooming company… you know there could never be another first so it’s kind of like, everything was, everything was poetic, you had all that going on, it was in my hometown, there was so much going on. It was very emotional.

On how AEW approached her: “The first call was a direct message… A lot of people out there…we’re very candid in discussing how things have operated. So a lot of people are like, “Oh, they are so unprofessional and like passing out deals in tweets. No, that’s not what happened. There were feelers. You know, People are saying, “Hey are you under contract? I’d like to discuss some things with you. You know, are you even at all interested?” So once we got that of the way. Once I realized it wasn’t a practical joke…we exchanged phone numbers and went about things, you know the actual, the professional route. But yeah, the very first message I thought it was a joke, I thought somebody was messing with me. Um, Cause here I am, I’m like, who’s going to sign me, little old me, right? Well, jokes on me, cause here I am.

On her experience with AEW and helping to build the brand: “A lot of it was the unknown. I’m a very creative person, I love to create in every aspect of the word. So being able to be a part of this new promotion and help build it from the ground up, that was very appealing to me. Especially when I kind of heard some of the names that were interested, were being thrown around, I knew I had to be apart of this, be around some of the greatest minds of the business, Chris Jericho, Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega. You know, these are names, these are people that absolutely. Then down the line, I found out Awesome Kong was on board and I was like, done deal, done deal, from there on out.”

On helping push diversity in wrestling: “It’s kind of a two-way street, right? Maybe, my presence will kind of encourage or spark interest, spark that comfortability in some people. To say, ‘hey, you know, here she is. She’s on this platform. She made it.’ It is going to be up to the performer to go to a wrestling school and get their traction out there. But yeah, times are changing, gears are shifting, we’re starting to see a lot more diversity in every aspect of that word.”

On trying to change how she’s booked as a Native American: “The wrestling industry has a history of being kind of, how do I put this delicately, a very stereotypical business. But like I said times are changing. More and more, day by day, we are stepping away from those things, those stereotypes, those tropes. Starting out in the indies, people would say they would have all of these suggestions for what you should do because you were Native. Well, I didn’t want that to necessarily be the primary focus of my character. I’m definitely proud of my heritage, but I’m also black, there’s a lot of intersectionality going on here. For me, it was trying to find a way to have subtle nods at my heritage, little tokens that I could be proud of to put Natives Americans on that forefront.”

On matches she wants to have at some point: “I don’t know if I get in trouble for saying this, but I’m going to say Mia Yim. There’s a little bit of history with us. We started in the same pro wrestling school, so that’s just on a personal level. Having come up with her, watching her get started, supporting each other, watching us both come up in the ranks, I would love that just for a personal chapter closure.”