AEW's Rachael Ellering Details How Her Father Opposed Her Wrestling Career

There are countless second and third-generation wrestlers currently involved in the pro wrestling business. While many of them get exposed to wrestling from a young age, that wasn't the case for ROH's Rachael Ellering, the daughter of legendary Paul Ellering, who recently returned to WWE to work alongside Karrion Kross and AOP.

"A lot of people assume multi-generational talents have all grown up around wrestling and I had a total opposite experience of that," she told "AEW Unrestricted." "My dad did not let us watch it, he didn't take us to shows."

While her father pushed for her to never watch wrestling, Ellering eventually got to view the business courtesy of falling down a YouTube rabbit hole. She watched Trish Stratus and Lita headline "WWE Raw" 19 times and became obsessed with Beth Phoenix, which led to her wanting to become a wrestler. Although she understands why her father kept his work and family life separate. But that didn't stop Rachael from following in his footsteps, despite him being against it. 

"When I told him I wanted to be a wrestler he was like, 'Absolutely not.' He's like, 'You have scholarships for college, go get your degree and we will kind of talk about it later,'" she said. "I think he thought it was just a phase that I was maybe going to grow out of. I did go to college, I did get my bachelor's degree, I didn't phone it in, I graduated with Latin and National honors, so I did the thing ... But I made my degree so wrestling-centric it's a joke."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "AEW Unrestricted" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.