Willow Nightingale on “Sometimes It’s Hard To Wrap My Head Around Why People Connect To Me And Cheer For Me” & Why AEW’s “Punk Rock” Alternative Appealed To Her

Denise Salcedo held a recent interview with AEW Women’s World Champion Willow Nightingale. One of the topics discussed included Nightingale’s thoughts about the outpouring support and reception she recived from the crowd at the August 5th AEW Dynamite show following her title victory at AEW Redemption.

“I started tearing up and I remember thinking to myself like, ‘Girl, don’t let a tear fall out of your eye right now, don’t actually give into it.’ I knew if I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop. Talk about a flurry of emotions, like that was just everything all at once. I guess really the way I felt in that moment as I was preparing to speak and actually speaking, it was kind of like — not that I don’t believe in myself, because I do. I couldn’t get this far if I didn’t believe in myself. I think sometimes it’s hard for me to wrap my head around why people connect to me and cheer for me the way that they do. Yes, I work hard. Yes, I try to show love and spread love. I have redeeming and likable qualities, I get that. But sometimes it’s like, I feel like the people just give me so much and I’m like, how? Why? At the end of the day, I’m just a person. All of us are just people. I think it was really just like, I don’t know. Sometimes, I don’t think anyone really deserves to be — I don’t want to say worshipped, that’s not the right word. The love that you give me, whatever you see in me that makes you want to root and cheer for me, I want other people to see it in themselves. It’s just very moving to me that you can connect — it’s so overwhelming and I’m rambling and skipping over words. I feel fortunate. Yeah.”

Nightingale also gave her thoughts about how AEW’s “punk rock” alternative style as a company appealed to her for her reason why she wanted to join the company.

“Good things will happen. And sometimes, it’s not in the way that you imagined or thought. When I started wrestling, AEW didn’t even exist, right?

But the moment it got created, I was like, ‘That’s the company I want to work for.’ That’s the kind of place that I just feel like would be such a fit for me, like this kind of punk rock, in a way, company where it’s like, ‘We’re the alternative. We’re doing things our way.’”

Nightingale also gave her thoughts about why she didn’t see where she might fit in WWE for her reason why she didn’t want to go to WWE.

“You can be someone different than what the other place told you you had to be to reach the top. And even when I started, I didn’t know that this would be where I would find myself and who I am and my success and my joy. But there is hope there. Fight for it. If it’s not there yet, it might still be in the works. It might still be created.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com, F4WOnline.com