Skye Blue sat down with TMZ Inside the Ring for a wide-ranging conversation covering her ankle surgery, her relationship with Kyle Fletcher, her history with Jon Moxley, the Triangle of Madness, the vacant TBS Championship, and her roots in Chicago, touching on nearly every chapter of her AEW career in one of her most detailed interviews to date.
Growing Up in Chicago
Skye Blue is Chicago through and through, and she said watching that fanbase show up at AEW events after years of driving to indie shows in cornfields across the Midwest is something she still thinks about.
“Coming from the Indies in Chicago and just the Midwest in general, doing all the drives to cornfields to get to the indie shows, those fans do those drives too to come to all these shows. To have come up from that, to then make it to AEW, and then see those same fans at AEW shows is just really a full circle moment.”
Her parents were wrestling fans before she was born. They attended a SummerSlam at the United Center in Chicago, which she believes was 1998. When AEW ran the first Collision at the same building, Skye Blue made sure they had front row seats.
“The last time they were at the United Center watching that big SummerSlam match, and then the next time they were there, they got to be front row watching their kid.”
She said she had to fight the urge to look at them during the match.
“I had to mentally go, don’t look at them, don’t look at them. If you see them, you’re gonna cry.”
She is an only child, and the weight of that is not lost on her.
“I’m making them proud, but I’m also living my dream at the same time.”
Getting Into Wrestling
The spark came from a hardcore match she was watching with her mother on the couch.
“I looked over and said, I’m going to do that, and she said, no, you’re not. So then I had to prove her wrong.”
That night she scheduled a tryout for spring break of her junior year of high school. When she showed her mother the confirmation email, the response shifted.
“She goes, oh, you’re serious.”
Her father was a bigger obstacle. She described him as a stubborn old Polish man and held off telling him until after the tryout.
“I did it, and then I didn’t give up. We told him, and he was like, oh, you’re wrestling these huge men? Because I was the only girl at my original training school. And I said, yeah, and I haven’t quit. And he was like, okay. And then after that, my dad was like, this is the coolest thing ever.”
She got signed in a casino battle royal in 2021 at All Out in Chicago, with a contract offer following shortly after.
The Ankle Injury
Her most vulnerable moment in the interview came when she walked through the full extent of her ankle surgery, which kept her out for ten months.
“When I went to the surgeon and they did all the scans, he was like, surgery is this day. I was dumbfounded. He said, you don’t have a choice. My ankle was literally detached from my leg. His exact words were, you look like you were in a car crash.”
She came out of the procedure with a steel plate and six screws on one side of the ankle and two long screws on the inside. The physical recovery was one thing. The mental side was another.
“You’re going from TV twice a week, being on the road, being go, go, go, to okay, you got to sit on the couch and you can’t do anything. My brain didn’t know how to handle it at first. The subconscious thoughts of am I going to be the same, am I going to be worse when I come back, are people going to not think of me the same.”
The turning point was the day she attempted to walk on her own without telling her physical therapist.
“I just went and tried it, and I looked like a crooked pirate, I was hobbling and waddling, but I was like, oh, that didn’t hurt that bad. The second I started to be more independent, I was like, okay, I can do this.”
She now sets off metal detectors at airports and can feel the hardware in her ankle when it is cold or rainy. In the ring, she works to block it out entirely.
“I just don’t think about it, and I just go. There’s all this metal in my ankle. I don’t think I can bend or twist metal, you know. So I try to just put it out of my brain and go out there and do what I was itching and dying to do for the ten months I was on the couch.”
The Triangle of Madness
She explained how the Triangle of Madness came together. Her tag team with Julia Hart formed after she was misted by Julia, with both women sustaining injuries at different times that delayed the partnership. When they finally got to tag consistently, adding Thekla was a natural next step.
“When we met Thekla, we were very intrigued because her and Julia have a lot of the same movements, and thought processes, and how they form ideas and visuals and creativity. We just kind of kept seeing little sparks of it, and then we were like, this would make sense, and it just kind of poof, and it happened.”
She said the Casino Gauntlet at All In Texas was the moment the trio truly clicked as a unit.
The TBS Championship and Potentially Facing Thekla
With Willow Nightingale vacating the TBS Championship due to injury, Skye Blue was asked whether that title is on her radar.
“As with any opportunity that comes my way, I’m going to take full advantage of it and put my best forward. I would love to represent TBS and show everybody what I can do, and that I am a force to be recognized.”
She called her street fight with Nightingale, the Manitoba Massacre, one of her favorite matches.
On whether her participation in the Owen Hart Cup creates tension within the Triangle of Madness given Thekla’s position as Women’s World Champion, Skye Blue said the group has an understanding.
“If I do win the Owen, then there’s that opportunity to wrestle Thekla for her title. But I think there is a mutual respect between us that as long as somebody in the Triangle is holding the gold and representing the company well and dominating the women’s division, that’s what matters most.”
Kyle Fletcher
She called her relationship with Kyle Fletcher one of the great advantages of her career, saying having a partner who understands the wrestling lifestyle at the same level removes a burden that many wrestlers carry alone.
“Trying to explain to somebody that’s not in our industry, hey, this is my job, but it’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. It’s not a nine to five where you clock out. We come home and it’s bedazzling gear, washing gear, doing meal prep, watching wrestling, studying different things. Having a partner that loves it that much and is in the same field and cares about it the same amount is something I absolutely love.”
She said Fletcher has directly contributed to her physical confidence.
“He’s helped me tremendously with my diet and workouts. I feel the most confident in my body that I’ve ever felt in my life. He’s absolutely my rock.”
When pressed on who the bigger travel diva is between them, she did not spare him.
“Biggest diva might be Kyle, honestly. He’s a very large Australian man, so he doesn’t fit in seats very well sometimes, and he’s always getting his head on the overhead bins.”
On the topic of Don Callis’s famous family dinners, Skye Blue confirmed she has never been invited despite being Fletcher’s partner.
“I’ve never been to a Don Callis dinner. I am very intrigued, though. I’ll sneak in somebody’s bag and try to go to one.”
The Jon Moxley Moment
Her answer to the question of her biggest starstruck wrestling moment came without hesitation. As a teenager with neon pink hair, her mother pulled her out of school so she could attend a convention appearance by Jon Moxley.
“I walked up to him and said, I want to be a wrestler one day, I’m going to train to be a wrestler. I remember walking away and I told my mom I was going to work with him one day. She said, if you put your mind to it, I’m sure you can.”
She noted that her mother already knew how stubborn she was and that training had already begun. The full circle moment arrived recently when Moxley passed her in the hallway at an AEW event.
“He was like, good job, kid. Little kid me was like screaming in the back of my brain. It was like, holy crap.”
MJF, Bald
Asked whether MJF would look good bald if he loses the title versus hair match against Darby Allin at Double or Nothing, Skye Blue was direct.
“Well, if you don’t look good with hair, I don’t think you’re going to look good.”
AEW Double or Nothing takes place this Sunday, May 24 at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens, New York on HBO Max PPV at 8 p.m. ET. The confirmed card is as follows:
AEW World Championship, Title vs. Hair: Darby Allin (c) vs. MJF (if MJF loses, he must shave his head)
AEW Women’s World Championship, Four-Way: Thekla (c) vs. Kris Statlander vs. Jamie Hayter vs. Hikaru Shida
AEW International Championship: Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. Konosuke Takeshita
AEW World Tag Team Championship, I Quit New York Street Fight: FTR – Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler (c) vs. Adam Copeland and Christian Cage (if Copeland and Cage lose, they cannot team together again)
AEW Continental Championship, No Time Limit: Jon Moxley (c) vs. Kyle O’Reilly
Stadium Stampede, 14-Man: Chris Jericho, Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, Kenny Omega, Jack Perry, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson vs. Ricochet, Bishop Kaun, Toa Liona, Mark Davis, Andrade El Idolo, Clark Connors and David Finlay
Men’s Owen Hart Cup Quarterfinal: Will Ospreay vs. Samoa Joe
Men’s Owen Hart Cup Quarterfinal: Swerve Strickland vs. Bandido
Women’s Owen Hart Cup Quarterfinal: Willow Nightingale vs. Alex Windsor
5-Minute Tag Team Eliminator: Divine Dominion – Megan Bayne and Lena Kross vs. Zayda Steel and Viva Van
10-Man Tag Team: Orange Cassidy, Mark Briscoe, Roderick Strong, AJ Befumo and QT Marshall vs. Shane Taylor Promotions
The full interview is available on TMZ Inside the Ring.
