Taylor Wilde inspired by WWE legend Trish Stratus proving women wrestlers can be beautiful and strong-Alistair McGeorge-Entertainment – Metro

Taylor Wilde saw a lot of herself Trish Stratus (Picture: IMPACT Wrestling/Basil Mahmud)

Taylor Wilde has hailed WWE legend Trish Stratus as an inspiration when it came to realising women in wrestling could be ‘beautiful’ and tough.

The IMPACT Wresting star, who will battle Deonna Purrazzo, Killer Kelly and Masha Slamovich tonight at Hard To Kill in a Number One Contenders match for the Knockouts World Title, has reflected on the way the Hall of Famer influenced her dream of getting in the ring.

She exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘It’s funny because Trish Stratus – who was really the first model turned wrestler – was actually one of the reasons why I wanted to get into professional wrestling.

‘Not because of the model turned wrestler thing, I didn’t even know she was a model! I just clued into wrestling one day in my early teens and I saw her.

‘I heard she was from Toronto and she went to York University, I went to York and I was a Toronto girl. I just thought, oh my God! She’s beautiful, she looks like a superhero!’

Taylor noted that before Trish, women in wrestling could be pigeonholed into a couple of different extremes, which she didn’t really relate to.

‘A lot of the women in wrestling prior to Trish were, like, the Chynas or the Sunnys. You were either kind of a steroid monster, or you were a “dumb blonde” porn star type who really only did these cat fights,’ she said.

Taylor has hailed Trish Stratus as a gamechanger (Picture: WWE)

‘So to see a girl that looked like Jenna Jameson but also kicked butt, I was like, “This is so cool, I didn’t know this was an option!”

‘It was really embracing that moment for me, where you could be a super babe and a tomboy and be respected. It was this moment where you could see the turning of the tide.’

It was a revelation for Taylor, who has always been a ‘dichotomy of masculine and feminine, as a woman’, and has found herself drawn to more male dominated careers, such as wrestling or her other job as a firefighter.

‘As a young girl growing up in the 80s and 90s, you’re always told, “You’re just a tomboy! You’ll grow out of it!” It’s like, well, no! I like makeup, I like getting dressed up sometimes, I like jewellery, I like things that are traditionally feminine,’ she smiled.

‘But in my heart, what I’m actually good at is I’m good at contact sports, I bleed blue collar, I have good mechanical aptitude skills, I’m good with a chainsaw, and I’m good with people.

‘It’s okay to be masculine and feminine and embrace those things. That’s what we’re still getting used to as a society, is to be both!’

The 36-year-old star noted she ‘loves to blur the lines’ and ‘shake s**t up’, and returning to IMPACT has been the perfect place for her to do that under the leadership of her ‘wrestling dads’ Scott D’Amore and Tommy Dreamer.

She explained: ‘One thing that the Knockouts have always been able to do, thank goodness for Scott and the management team he’s built, is push women’s wrestling to be equal to the men’s division. And even when there’s inter-gender wrestling, it’s not advertised as inter-gender wrestling, it’s just wrestling!

‘We’ve always had the ability to have multiple matches on a show, we’re not these gimmick matches – some of them are, but it’s not in a way that makes them inherently fluffy or gimmicky, like Bra and Panties Matches.’

Taylor Wilde is in action at Hard To Kill (Picture: IMPACT)

Taylor was quick to point out there’s ‘nothing wrong’ with the racier kind of matches, adding that wrestling is ‘a male soap opera’ and having that kind of diversity isn’t necessarily a negative.

It’s just IMPACT has always prided itself on building female characters based on the wrestling abilities and we’ve not really needed that because we’ve never really had the model turned wrestler atmosphere,’ she shrugged, voicing her pride over tonight’s Hard To Kill show with two huge Knockouts matches on the main card.

She added: ‘It is the reason why I’m back in wrestling in 2023 after taking 10 years off, because IMPACT keeps pushing! It keeps pushing the envelope and making women’s wrestling better and it makes the other, bigger wrestling contending companies grow their women’s divisions as well!’

Reflecting on a turbulent period which included Taylor getting divorced and taking a break from IMPACT for almost a year until last November, she beamed and revealed she’s in an amazing place now.

‘My spirituality and what we’re seeing in the witchcraft world, in my character, has been my way to stay grounded,’ she said, also referencing the importance of ‘gratitude.

She added: ‘If you asked me, three years ago, I’d probably have a different answer. It’d be, “Ah! Just trying to stay alive!” But, this is my journey, you know what I mean? For every challenge, for every “power moment” we call it, when everything’s falling apart, I know that it’s happening for me, and not to me.

‘So, with the bad there’s good, without darkness there’s no light, so I’m a walking cliche! I am so happy, I really am!’

IMPACT Wrestling: Hard To Kill airs on January 13 at 1am on Fite TV.

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