KiLynn King Gives The Best Wrestling Advice She's Received
Team 3D Academy graduate KiLynn has been increasingly making a name for herself in the last few years, first in AEW and now in the NWA, where she's consistently been one of the top contenders for Kamille's NWA World Women's Championship belt. Recently, though, in giving an interview to the Putting You Over podcast, she was asked to go back in time for the best piece of advice that Bully Ray had given her while she was at his school. And while it wasn't advice that she needed by that point in time, it was still a valuable lesson that she could spread to others.
"He kind of gave it to me after I was already at his school, so it didn't really matter, but one of the best [pieces of] advice I've heard him say out loud to me or other people [is this]: Find a school that is run by people who were successful in this business and people who have produced the successful people in this business," she explained. "There are a lot of wrestling schools out there who just want to open a school or say that they run a wrestling school, and they train you for like two seconds and then throw you out to the wolves. It's a crappy system, and unfortunately, there's a lot of it out there, but it's so true: You have to find a school that is run by somebody who has done legitimate stuff in this business, no matter what company it is, but they found success. They expanded their name and their brand and they've shown people 'Hey, I know how to be successful and I know how to make money, and of course, I know how to wrestle.' And not only that, but they can take what they've done with themselves and expand it upon others."
Bully Ray wanted students to avoid the bad experiences he went through
While it's the kind of advice that is not uncommon from big-name wrestlers who are asked about how to select a wrestling school, for Bully Ray, it was also a matter of trying to prevent others from being ripped off by the kind of unsavory characters that he encountered when he was first trying to break into the wrestling business.
"I remember he told us he went through the experience where he would go to places to train, and they would just take his money and rip him off," she recalled. "And that's why he wanted to make sure that when he opened his school with D-Von, that would not be the experience they left with their students. That they would get in-depth training and really understand the physicality of the business and the mental part of the business. And we got just that at our school." King added that it's the main piece of advice she offers to prospective wrestlers who ask her for wrestling school recommendations.
It's worth noting that Bully Ray's advice, properly parsed, is not necessarily the more limited "only go to a school run by a big name" advice that many wrestlers give, especially since not every name-brand school is not run by the big-name on the sign. To his credit, he made it clear that the school needs to be run by someone with a track record, whether it's of their own success in the wrestling business or consistently producing students who become successful.