Willow Nightingale: “I would really love to wrestle Jamie Hayter again”

Jan 8, 2023 - by James Walsh

Willow Nightingale has a long list of talents she’d like to face in the ring including Toni Storm, Mercedes Mone and more. The AEW star recently spoke with Fightful’s Grapsody podcast and discussed some of her goals in wrestling, and you can see some highlights below:

On who she’d like to face in the ring: “Toni Storm is a big one for me. I would really love to wrestle Jamie Hayter again, not just because she’s champion, but because she’s champion [laughs]. I definitely think both Sasha (Banks) and Bayley are two women who were helping revolutionize the business when I was coming up on the Indies and have been a major influence to me, so as farfetched as it sometimes seems, I will never take their names off of the table. (Hikaru) Shida would be awesome too. I want to wrestle everyone, honestly, whether that be people who are far more experienced than me, or people I’ve been a fan of for a long time, or even the women on our roster who are less experienced. I would love to help them realize their own strengths and give them confidence. I want to be a consistent wrestler in the quality of my matches, and I also want to be dependable and help other people on our roster. Everyone, give me everybody. Willow vs. The World.”

On wanting to work a Tokyo Dome show: “Absolutely. I don’t think I’ve ever hidden the fact that wrestling in Japan was a goal of mine. Working the biggest venue there would obviously be on my list. I know STARDOM did a show in New York a couple of weeks ago, so you’re seeing more opportunity pop up in the US too to be wrestling over there and hopefully, more exchange happening everywhere. You never know where you can end up or what random one-off matches are happening nowadays. I never want to put myself in a box and limit what I am possibly able to do one day.

“When I started wrestling, the trainer asked everyone in the class, ‘What is your biggest goal in wrestling?’ The trainer was Blake Morris. He said, ‘My biggest goal was to main event WrestleMania.’ At that time, no women had main evented WrestleMania, let alone black women, but when he said it, I was like, ‘Damn, you’re right, I want to do that too. I want to main event WrestleMania.’ There were a few people who were like, ‘That’s crazy, why would you even say that?’ In the time I’ve been wrestling, it’s happened. Never limit what you think you can and can’t do in this business. Don’t put limitations on yourself. If other people put limitations on you, that’s on them. It’s up to you to say, ‘Nope, I can make it happen.’”

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