Raquel Gonzalez On 2020 Being Her Breakout Year, The Return of Halloween Havoc

Raquel Gonzalez is set to take on Rhea Ripley at NXT Halloween Havoc tonight, and discussed the match as well as 2020 being her breakout year in a new interview with PWInsider. You can check out some highlights below:

On her breakout year in 2020: “It’s been pretty surreal. This entire year has felt so long but at the same time has gone by so fast. It seems far away now that we were in Portland and I had my debut and we were traveling and we were in front of live audiences and things were kind of going somewhere and then all of a sudden with everything going on in the world with the pandemic, everything just stopped. But the one thing that didn’t stop was of course NXT and WWE, we were giving people this outlet from reality but we ourselves were also living this reality. It’s almost been like a surreal, double world type of thing, so it’s been something for me to…I have to sit back and think about it and realize that yeah, this has been a big year for myself and my career and coming out and having my debut and having these moments on Takeovers and how finally getting to have a singles match with Rhea Ripley on Halloween Havoc, the return of Halloween Havoc, it’s mind-blowing, it’s absolutely mind-blowing. Even talking about it and thinking about it right now still gives me a little bit of goosebumps to know that it’s tomorrow and I’m honestly so excited and I can’t wait because there’s just so much that I want to do and I want to show and want to prove and I feel like tomorrow is kind of just the beginning stepping stone for that.”

On the excitement level in NXT for Halloween Havoc’s resurrection: “I can tell you the level is out of this roof. It is so high with everyone that is involved in NXT, and it’s mostly because I was just saying this but every single person here that I have spoken to loves Halloween. We love the holiday, we love the theme, we love the costumes, we love getting dressed up, everything about it. Halloween is probably the favorite holiday of everyone here at NXT and it brought the excitement up so high that everybody wants to come out on Wednesday and give 120%. We are definitely treating this as a Takeover because it’s the resurrection of Halloween Havoc and because it’s such a big deal and we want it to be something amazing and great because we want to bring it back again next year. It’s something that we would love to have every year and it’s obviously a big thing to live up to as well because of what it was in the past and what the older crowd sees but I hope it brings in a couple more viewers of the older crowd who miss seeing it and it makes them want to watch not just Halloween Havoc but NXT a whole lot more.”

On building her relationship with Dakota Kai: “I would say that me being in a team with Dakota has leveled us both up because she brings being a veteran and a skillset and a mindset and a speed that I was lacking in my ability and in these past 6 months it’s helped me in my career and in my in-ring skills to really take my skills to the next level and be something that I know I can be. Kind of the same for her, I feel like I brought a lot of power and strength to the group and that’s something that we’ve both been able to feed off of and give each other confidence off of. So right now while I handle business with Rhea and she’s handling business with Ember, we both know that we still have each other to fall back on and we have that confidence because we’re in the same mindset here, we have the same goal. We are here to show that we are a force to be reckoned with in the NXT Women’s Division, take that NXT Women’s title and then eventually start going for the WWE Tag Titles and kind of just going from there. I was just saying it would be great for us to have those tag titles here in NXT and almost tell the girls from Raw and Smackdown, ‘Hey you want them, come get them, now’s your chance.'”

On her mindset going into her match with Rhea Ripley: “There’s no doubt that the excitement is here. I’m so excited, nervous, angsty, I honestly cannot wait to get in there, hear that bell ring and just go at it, because I feel like we have so much built up tension both Rhea and I, that we are both just sitting on the edges of our seats just ready to get called in. It is two minutes left in the game, I’m on the edge of the seat, Coach better put me in because I just want to frickin’ block some shots and make some shots, you know what I’m saying? [laughs]”