Nearly two weeks ago, the pro wrestling world lost one of its most beloved performers, Windham Rotunda, better known as Bray Wyatt. Wyatt tragically passed away at the young age of 36, but that does not take away from the impact he left on the business and the people he got to work with in that relatively short time. That sentiment was hammered home in the days following his passing, as WWE presented back-to-back tributes on Smackdown and Raw, while AEW allowed their own nods to him from their performers.
In an interview with Wrestling News Co., LWO member Zelina Vega opened up about the loss of Wyatt and how he helped her in her career.
“I had been trying since 2010, and I didn’t get there until 2017,” she said. “When I came in for tryouts, one of the scariest things to do as an extra is to have a tryout match before Smackdown started. So, every week we’d have that because I was traveling with them as a Rosebud just trying to, hopefully, one time, they’d be like, ‘You know what? Let’s just throw her in there.’
“I just was hoping to get a second look, and I had a match, and I remember, at that point if you got the attention of the boys, the boys meaning like everybody like in the locker room, people surrounding the ring. People are off talking about their matches; they’re talking to producers, whatever. But the second I got in there, I remember Bray turning around and seeing me and started watching, and he’s kind of there, and he’s watching, and I see him out the corner of my eyes watching.
“And he gets so into it that he started a Thea chat, he started cheering for me during the match, and it was right as I was hitting my comeback, and he was getting everybody else involved, and everybody at that point was cheering for me. And then they started clapping after the match was done, and he led that, he led that whole thing. And then I see him walk up to who was in charge here at the time of talent relations, and he said, ‘She should be with us. That girl right there, she’s been working her ass off. She deserves to be with us.’
“And I was like, whoa, Bray Wyatt just said that. That is the coolest freakin thing ever. And yes, it did take me some years after that, but just knowing that he was one of the people backing me, that he was one of the people supporting me, that was just such a cool thing for me because he didn’t have to do that. He could have just continued going about his day and planning his match and whatever it was that he was doing, but he took that time to help me get better. Help me be seen for what he saw me as. I have nothing but good, warm memories of him.”
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