During a recent appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, WWE superstar IYO SKY revealed that she had never watched professional wrestling before her own debut. She described the match as so “awful” that it made her want to quit the business immediately.
“I’ve never watched wrestling before I became a wrestler because my sister invited me to become a wrestler,” SKY explained. “Before that, I never even watched wrestling. I totally didn’t know what wrestling is. I have no idea about pro wrestling.”
She recounted being rushed into the ring after just a few months of training. “We became a wrestler with only three months training. My debut match was awful,” she said. “Everything was so bad I cannot explain. Even I didn’t know that both shoulders on the mat for a count of 1-2-3 means you lose. I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know that rule, too. I had a debut match in the ring. So that is crazy. I was 16 years old.”
The experience left her feeling deeply embarrassed and ready to walk away. “I was just so embarrassed because my debut match was so bad, and maybe the audience was only 30 people, but I felt so embarrassed, so I wanted to quit,” she admitted. “But actually, I was so frustrated as well. I wanted to change their mind, because certain people think, ‘Oh, Io Shirai is a bad wrestler.’ So I wanted to change something like that.”
IYO SKY, then known as Io Shirai, made her professional wrestling debut in 2007. She went on to become one of the most acclaimed female wrestlers in the world, winning multiple championships in Japan before signing with WWE in 2018. She is currently a top star on Friday Night SmackDown.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
