This Sunday (April 29th), Viper will defend the ICW Women’s Championship against Kasey Owens at ICW’s Barramania event.
Ahead of her title defense, the Scottish wrestling star spoke with The Sunday Post to discuss the rise of Women’s Wrestling, capturing the Stardom SWA Championship from Toni Storm and wanting to inspire others. Highlights of the interview below.
On the rise of Women’s Wrestling: It’s phenomenal. When I started wrestling in Scotland, it never even occurred to me that you could be a women’s wrestler. It took going to a school and asking if I could come to realize that this was something you could do here. And to see what it’s like now… we’re not just part of the show, a feature or novelty, we are one of the main attractions. I’m really proud of all the girls for all the hard work they’ve put in and we’re slowly taking up more space – you can see the boys are starting to sweat a wee bit!
On her Title vs. Title match against Toni Storm: That was a huge match. Not only was it personally important for me to defend the title in Japan but it was a double title. That kind of match doesn’t happen often, so it was a lot of pressure! I was a wee bit freaked out about it at the time but I’m really glad that that’s what they decided to do with it. It elevated the match. We’ve wrestled from literal working men’s clubs in Yorkshire in front of maybe 50 people to working in the bigger promotions in the UK, getting to go to Japan and WWE. It almost feels like every time we get to do it, it gets a little fuller circle. I love the story that we have all through our careers. We’re always evolving because we know each other so well and we have to think like each other and remember everything we can dish out and try to always take it one step more.
On intergender wrestling: With the way women wrestling is going now, I think it’s just a period of time before we break out into the guy’s division and mix it a little bit in there. If we were to take gender out of the equation, you’ll quite happily sit there and watch a very skinny hundred aa nd twenty-pound guy going with a heavyweight and that’s believable, whereas I’m definitely heavier than that, but it’s not believable for me to wrestle a cruiserweight mid-size guy? When you put it like that I really have to disagree with people, and even at that it’s wrestling, we’re telling stories!
On wanting to inspire others: If you’re talented and if you’re hard working everything else shouldn’t matter, it’s all superficial. I don’t believe that being skinny or being fat makes a difference to how good a character or wrestler you are. I don’t think it affects your ability to tell a story. I don’t want girls or guys to look at me and believe in me. I want people to look at me and think ‘she can do what she wants to do in life, I can do what I want to do in life.’ For me that’s more important than just representing people in wrestling, it’s giving people confidence to do what they wouldn’t normally have done. When I was younger I had great role models growing up in life but because I didn’t see them very much in the field that I wanted to do, I just didn’t think it was something that was possible.
Viper also discusses representing ICW wherever she goes, why the promotion feels like home to her and Netflix’s GLOW bringing a new audience to women’s wrestling.
You can read the full interview here.
What did you think of the interview? Do you agree with Viper’s POV? Would you like to see more intergender wrestling take place? Let us know in the comments below!
