Austrian-born Thekla is one of the most interesting women in professional wrestling. She is a former ballerina, a fluent speaker of multiple languages, has performed in a punk rock band, designs her own gear, in addition to a million other impressive accomplishments.
Wrestling fans will recognize her as the Toxic Spider from the Stardom promotion in Japan. She’s known for her unique style, flexibility, and being a free spirit.
Merely one day after the dissolution of her former faction, Donna Del Mondo, and her announcement of a brief hiatus from wrestling, Thekla sat down with SEScoops contributor Lyric Swinton in location in Tokyo, Japan to discuss all things Donna Del Mondo, upcoming time off, her goals as a singles wrestler in 2024, and so much more.
Thekla Interview
Here are some highlights from the conversation:
How she came to the decision to take some time off:
“Well, there’s a few things. Definitely. You’ve seen the Stardom schedule, right? It’s really extreme. I think Stardom did like 140 shows last year or something. I had more than a hundred matches, and I’ve been here for four years and I barely ever take time off. The Japanese girls are a little bit more used to it because they’ve got this crazy work ethic. I do too naturally but sometimes I get tired too. I haven’t been home in one and a half years, so maybe I hope to make it back during that time. But doing a hundred or 110 matches a year kind of takes its toll, especially with the Stardom style. This is not WWE. You know how everybody’s working and the way we’re traveling too. And yeah, it’s just your body starts to kind of….every match, you can feel it afterwards.
So I was like, okay, I could feel Donna Del Mondo they might be coming to an end. And I quickly thought maybe that’s a perfect time to just go away for a little while and also refill my creative tanks. Because what I’m going to start doing today is I’m going to start drawing my next gear set….I already have some stuff ready and my mom just sent me a box of new fabrics and some white fur, so I might be doing something in that direction. And I’m going to be painting a lot. So I’ve got an exhibition coming up in April. That’s going to be in Tokyo. But I hope I can do it in Austria too. Also talking to some people in New York so I want to travel around. Depending on how much time I’m taking off, it’s going to be me being in the studio, drawing, drawing, drawing.”
What she’s looking forward to upon her return to the ring:
“First of all, having that freedom of not having to react to my teammates is going to be very nice for me. I’m originally a lone wolf kind of character. I’m a singles wrestler. I love being in Donna Del Mondo because I got to learn a lot from the people around me. But just naturally, I like to do things my way. So that’s going to be very freeing. And I’ve always had a creative vision of how things are supposed to be done and how to excite people, and I have to be by myself to do that. Similar to a Doja Cat or a Lady Gaga. Just a little off. Just a little bit. I want to play around with things, and I’ve always dreamed of coming up with something that nobody’s ever seen. You can see my mood set. I think it’s one of the most original creative move sets.
I know how to use my body in a way, and I’ve got freakishly hyper flexibility and stuff, and that’s just how I was born. But I know how to use that. And I want to go back a little bit more to that, to creating new things that people haven’t seen before. Like the spider plex from the rope where I come up, that sort of stuff where people go, hey, only she can actually really do that. You know what I mean? And create a style of storytelling [with] the way I have a little weird way of moving in the ring too. I want to bite more into that and do things my way.
When it comes to bookings, I love Stardom. I love being in Japan. And Japan is my base, but I’ve really been dreaming also to get out of Japan and to take it to other countries. I went to Singapore last year, that was brilliant. Just feeling the love from international fans is so cool. And getting to showcase what we do here in Japan is really nice. So definitely I want to go to the States this year and experience a lot of stuff outside of the Japanese bubble and also change up my style a little bit because I think American style is very, very different. Very different and it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I always feel like I love learning and I love studying new things. And then I love to pick from different things and then mix it up. That’s really important for me, and that’s what I need to stay inspired. And I’ve been in Japan a little bit too long. I know how it works here. I know how it’s done. I know what strong style is like, and I need to get inspired by something new again.
And the other thing is I want to wrestle in a lot of weird places….I would love to wrestle in Cambodia or Nepal, take it to places where people have never seen wrestling before, and have that interesting cultural exchange. I like to see that expression on people’s face when they see something for the first time, for the first ‘what is this?’…just create experiences for people that they’re never going to forget. And I feel I love Japan, but I feel that people are very oversaturated here. Because there’s so much wrestling, there’s so much great wrestling. So I think it’s a little unfair to the rest of the world.”
How Donna Del Mondo helped shape her presentation:
“I think it has changed me a lot actually, because when I first came to Stardom, I had a whole different vibe to me which was more like, yeah, let’s f–king go b-tches, which I do like and which is what comes out naturally. But being in Donna Del Mondo calmed me down a lot more. People who know me very well, they say the Thekla you see in the ring is like the toned down version of her basically because outside of the ring, she’s fu–ing crazy freak. But what I learned with being around Giulia and Maika, it’s looking like a star and acting a little reserved to looking cool, being beautiful too, and those are important things if you want to appeal to a huge crowd. And just being big, all the costumes, the gowns…
So at first, I came in with slick stuff, leather coats and stuff, which I really like. But next to them I’d be [looking] tiny, where’s my stuff? So with that last one [gear], I finally went, well, the one before too, the white. [The recent black gear] gave me a little bit of volume. So being big, being larger than life… I was like, all right, I got to add some stuff here and there, claim some space for myself. And that’s really important. I think. Other than that, in the future, I would like to do a mix, have that weird edginess that I originally had as a Toxic Spider, but combine it with that larger-than-life way of carrying yourself, which is from Donna Del Mondo. So that’s what I’m going to aim for in the future.”
On constructing her look as the Toxic Spider:
“Of course I always start with what I like. That’s the most important thing. So there are certain colors that I’m really into, but then there’s something that catches my attention, I see something on the internet or I go on, what is it, Pinterest. So it’s like a mix of, oh sh-t, I really want it. I want to do something in that direction that looks really cool, that could be
perfect for a Toxic Spider look. So I collect images basically, and then I start forming something that could go in this direction, that could be the base color or whatever. At the same time, I start going to a fabric store and I go look at all the fabrics, and then I feel everything, and I take pictures of the stuff that I like, and then I’ll choose stuff and I’ll put it together and see if that’s going to work. And then I start to design, and then I just go on my iPad and start drawing. And it’s like, okay, could I use this? Could I use that basically?
And then the end result, I try to think, okay, does this look like a star? Does it fit the Toxic Spider? Those are the two things that recently I’m trying to look for. It needs to be…I always try to include stuff that is repeating stuff. Usually you will find studs or four big studs here, snakeskin has been something I’ve been using, or the big spider in the back. You always find lot of leather and furs…So that, and the other thing is, do I look like a star? Would a star wear this? Know what I mean? So is this a fit for, I don’t know, even a Doja Cat? You know what I mean…Is this silly or is this hot sh-t?
On her current Stardom contract status:
“My contract is up soon, so that too, I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do after that so we’ll see. I’m definitely very interested in traveling a lot.”
On working in the United States and potential dream opponents:
“They [Stardom management] know that I’m really interested in going abroad and going to the States. I’ve made that very clear. So I don’t know yet what’s planned for that [upcoming Stardom American Dream show in Philadelphia], but I would love, love to go for sure….
About dream opponents…One in the mix is obviously Mercedes [Moné]. Absolutely. She looks like a star. And I loved her style, and that’s just somebody I would love to be in the ring with, especially after meeting her briefly at Stardom. She’s just such a nice person. She’s got the look. It’s the look! And that’s what I’m kind of really targeting right now. People who have that similar mindset when it comes to that sort of stuff. And who else? Athena we were talking about. She’s cool. Maybe we’re even too similar, you know what I mean? But that’s somebody I would love to hang out with. Who else do we have?
WWE? Not so much right now. I don’t know. I mean obviously Charlotte Flair is a fantastic wrestler. They’ve got brilliant wrestlers like Becky Lynch and stuff, but I mean, they’re very full there too. WWE, I never saw myself there growing up as a wrestler because way too much I get really annoyed when somebody tells me what to do, but only recently I’ve thought that could be so interesting to be able to learn from the best because they have brilliant coaches and just performance centers there so that’s really interesting.
But again, AEW is really cool because they give people a lot of freedom, you know what I mean? I feel like the product is still developing and there’s space for everything and for a lot of creative people too. Yeah. So that’s it. That’s really something that I would like to look into.”
On the NJPW Strong Women’s Championship:
“Giulia’s Strong title, I’ve been eyeing that for a long time, yeah, I’m not going to lie. It is a beautiful belt and Giulia is a great champion and very strong. Obviously being her tag partner and being with her in the mix, it’s kind of, I mean, not hard. I could have still challenged for it, but you don’t want to, you know…So that’s why yesterday [Ittenyon Stardom Gate 1.4] I was also, I was patting the belt a little bit, said this might be something coming up. That’s a cool belt. Not only beautiful, but just the people who have challenged for it so far and the way the belt gets to travel, I would like to be part of that.”
On what she learned from her former Donna Del Mondo teammates:
“With Maika, I think Maika can only do Maika, and I really appreciate it. I think that’s really cool. She’s always natural, you know what I mean? She’s just being herself and she’s really good at that. She’s so likable and never fake and very consistent with what she does and just a damn powerhouse. It’s beautiful to watch her work and she never backs down either. So I like that about Maika. She’s natural, she’s powerful, and just out there.
And with Sakurai it’s kind of funny because she started out as the weakest, but she’s kind of found herself a little character which is really cool. And I really admire how she just takes the mic and just makes the people come up for her. So I don’t always understand it because it’s so based on little jokes. But she’s one of the most, how do you say…she’s really eager to learn and she’s very brave and she’s really tough, actually. Can’t really tell but she puts a lot of work into her stuff too… she always asks everybody for their opinion, takes notes. And so that’s very inspiring.
And then Giulia, of course is kind of the queen. She’s the all rounder. I think watching her, she’s one of the most self-confident people I’ve ever met in my whole life. And I’ve met a lot of confident people in my life, but there’s almost nothing that can stop her from knowing that she’s the best. And she always puts the work in, if it’s in the ring or if it’s her appearance, she’s got the look. We’ve got a similar taste also, always been like that. But her… she never complains. Even if she goes through the hardest matches, she’s always, she wipes off the blood and she’s like, I’m cool. I don’t care. She’s just a bad motherf–ker. So that’s definitely inspiring.
But for me I always think of myself as a pretty self-confident person. But sometimes there’s a challenge where it’s like, whew I don’t know about this one man, but with Giulia, it’s like I almost never see this flinch of her just being like, ugh. She just goes straight into things and she’s being herself and she doesn’t take sh-t from anybody. And she will fight anybody inside and outside of the ring, not physically outside of the ring, but when it’s about what she believes in, she’s got strong beliefs and I really respect that. It’s really cool. She just knows how to go her own way. And I’m similar with that, but she’s no bulls–t. And I really respect people like that.”
