A quote from Becky Lynch woke up the wrestle web on an otherwise slow pre-holiday (in the U.S.) Wednesday morning. It came from her appearance with husband Seth Rollins on comedian Bert Kreischer’s YouTube
show Something’s Burning.
The Man and her man were sharing the story of how their friendship turned into romance with Kreischer. Lynch mentions that one of the reasons they kept things platonic was because she was’d always been cautioned to “stay away from the boys”.
The host is shocked, seemingly because that’s advice given to the women’s locker room instead of making “stay away from the girls” a rule for the men. Lynch and Rollins smarten him on up wrestling and WWE culture, at least circa 2014-2015 when Becky was called up to the main roster.
“No, [it’s] stay away from the boys. Like certain things — I’m not gonna name names, but there was a guy on the main roster who it was like, ‘Be careful. Be careful because… one, he’ll try to sleep with you. If he sleeps with you, then he’ll blacklist you…
“‘… And then if he tries to sleep with you and you don’t sleep with him, he’ll also blacklist you.’ So there was this line that you had to walk this tightrope…”
Kreischer asks Lynch if he knows the main roster wrestler she’s talking about, and Lynch replies, “You know him, definitely”, and the Bert jokes that viewers should guess in the comments (he also got a laugh earlier guessing that Becky was talking about Kreischer’s occasional co-star and friend Cody Rhodes). She then continues:
“At one point, he [the anonymous main roster harasser] got my number and I remember being like, [gasps] ‘How do you walk this line?’… So there was always this thing of — cause if you get into a relationship and things go south, they’re not gonna fire the guy. They’re always gonna fire the girl, you know? So, it was a very, very scary thing.”
It’s messed up that that went on, and hopefully the indications we’ve gotten that things have gotten better for women at WWE and in wrestling are true. There are also indications that they’re still not great however*, so there’s still work to be done.
It’s probably not the most important part of that work, but Lynch, Rollins, and Kreischer openly mocking a creep — even years later and without naming names — can’t hurt.
Watch Becky and Seth’s entire appearance on Something’s Burning below. The above quotes are taken from just after the 1 hour and 19 minute mark.
* That’s not exclusive to wrestling, either. This is anecdotal, but as I relayed this story to my wife, she didn’t think it sounded that dissimilar to her experiences in other more mainstream fields.
