SmackDown Live Women’s Champion Natalya recently did an interview with Planeta Wrestling to discuss a variety of professional wrestling topics. During the interview Natalya talked about if she prefers to play a babyface or a heel, and the significance of her NXT TakeOver match against Charlotte Flair back in 2014. You can check out the highlights here below:
If she prefers playing a babyface or a heel:
“Being a good guy is much easier for me because I feel like it’s much more natural for me to be a babyface and have to be smiley and taking selfies with the fans and getting everybody into it, being vulnerable when I need to be,” Natalya said. “But being bad is really, really fun. I really like being bad and I like the challenge of making the audience boo me. It’s just really fun, I quite enjoy it.”
The significance of her NXT TakeOver match against Charlotte Flair in 2014:
“For me, the Takeover match at NXT, it was only in front of 200 people and that live crowd, it was insane to think that those 200 people could give me a WrestleMania moment. I say that because that match with her was just as special to me as main-eventing WrestleMania,” she said. “It really embodied everything that I am about, as far as women’s wrestling: working hard and paying it forward.
“I’ve been wrestling since I was 18 years old, and I was able to take all the skills that I’ve learned from my family, from a very prestigious Japanese coach, from learning in The Dungeon, from the various awesome coaches I’ve had and from my experiences around the world, I was able to take that and help pay it forward to somebody that needed it. Charlotte was up-and-coming, she had yet to prove herself and was still learning. So for me to be able to pass on my knowledge and then to also elevate myself, I think it opened everyone’s eyes to the fact that there’s an art to being able to protect yourself and being able to help build new talent. So that was very, very special for me.
“Also Charlotte losing her brother, who had recently passed away before that match happened,” she continued. “Although we compete in the ring and we play roles on TV of good and bad, it was very important for me to give Charlotte that moment for her dad and her family.”
H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions
