Raquel Rodriguez On Name Change: “It Feels Like It Was Meant To Be”

Raquel Rodriguez doesn’t have her real last name on WWE TV anymore. Serving as a guest on the Bleav in Pro Wrestling Podcast, Raquel said the idea of a name change never bothered her (h/t Fightful).

On accepting name change: “They just basically said, ‘Hey, you’re getting a name change and this is it,’” Raquel recalled. “I was like, ‘Cool, that’s fine.’ I really had no big arguments with it at all. It was just a simple little switch,” Rodriquez said. “It’s funny, I was just joking with Rhea (Ripley) last Friday because she was actually at SmackDown, and her initials are R-R, Rhea Ripley, and we’ve always joked about being a tag team, and we had our feud NXT. Well, now my initials are R-R, Raquel Rodriguez. So it kind of just feels like it was meant to be, so I’m okay with it. We’re starting to think of new tag names.”

On looking to capitalize on main roster opportunity: “This is what I’ve been waiting for. It’s what I’ve worked fo,” Raquel said. “This is what all the sacrifices are for. But I definitely took that moment (getting called up) and I squashed it right away, because I was like, this doesn’t mean you made it. This doesn’t mean that it’s over. You know what I mean? Like this is where the work begins and this is where you really have to start hustling.”