WWE's Lyra Valkyria On Deciding To Pursue Wrestling, Being Inspired By Becky Lynch

"Never meet your heroes," the old adage goes, though we're not sure how much that applies to the world of professional wrestling. Just ask WWE Intercontinental Champion Lyra Valkyria, who recently won the tag team titles with her hero, Becky Lynch, at WrestleMania 41. Sure, Lynch turned on her in story when they lost the titles back to the current champs, Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez of the Judgment Day, but if her recent interview with Chris Van Vliet on his "Insight" podcast is any indicator, Lyra isn't holding it against her in real life.

Valkyria spoke about her decision to get into wrestling, a choice made in the wee hours of the morning while watching WWE Raw. "It must have been 3 am, and I was on my phone looking it up, I kind of just went, 'I'm just going to do this,'" she said. "Because if I put down my phone right now, go to sleep, and I say, maybe I'll do this next week. I won't. It was just one of those freak things that I was like, just get up and go, and it turned my whole life around." She admitted that, in her youthful shyness, she considered giving a fake name on her first day in case it went poorly. 

Valkyria said she doesn't remember the details of her first day well, though some things stuck with her. "I remember the pain the next day, and I remember running around in a circle with the few guys that were outside. I met my fiancé that very first day as well. He was the first person I ever met. Shook my hand outside the gym."

A decade into her pro wrestling journey and Valkyria is working a program with the woman who inspired her. "It's just crazy, she's the one that broke all the glass ceilings, the one that did it all. But she didn't just do it and succeed; she went and did things that no one ever thought possible. So I have a crazy level of respect for that." Valkyria likened Lynch to the first person to run a 4-minute mile. "Once one person broke that. And then one person broke it, and then when that one person broke it, it was broken by the next person and the next person and the next person. It's almost like you just need that one person to show you that it's possible. Then suddenly, it just opens up the floodgates and suddenly there's no limit. So to have a woman from my tiny country of Ireland to have gone that far, I really feel like if she can, then why not me?"