Willow Nightingale Reflects On How Japanese Women’s Wrestling Influenced Her

Willow Nightingale recently looked at how Japanese women’s wrestling influenced not just her career, but the industry as a whole. Nightingale touched on the topic during her appearance on Maps & Graps with Lyric Swinton, and you can see highlights below (via Wrestling Inc):

On how Japanese women’s wrestling influenced her: “Specifically speaking about Japan, a lot of my personal influences and role models came from there. When you think of…Bull Nakano, Aja Kong, even Awesome Kong, Kharma, whatever name you know her as, she really came into her own from going over there. Her and Aja, we’re looking at biracial, black women, who are not the conventional body type you see in wrestling. That hits home for me. When the time came where I was like ‘Can I be a wrestler? Will I sign up?’ Like, that really stuck me in my head and helped me believe that it was possible.”

On the influence in wrestling as a whole: “To be able to see a culture where, for maybe 20 years now, women’s wrestling has been wrestling at the forefront, that speaks volumes about how we got to where we are now. Whereas in the past, maybe 20 years ago when I was a kid watching [US] wrestling, women’s wrestlers did wrestle, and they were great at it. But they weren’t really given the platform to have the wrestling itself be at the forefront.”