Sonny Kiss Comments On Teaming And Feuding With Joey Janela
In an appearance on The Sessions with Renee Paquette, AEW star Sonny Kiss talked about working with Joey Janela. Sonny Kiss and Janela first worked together as a tag team for a year before beginning a rivalry that has taken place on AEW Dark and AEW Dark: Elevation. Kiss described both experiences as positive, and she credited Janela for helping her grow as a performer.
"Teaming with Joey was crazy," Kiss said. "I absolutely loved it. I love Joey Janela so much. Joey works very hard. I don't know how many people realize that. He works really hard and he cares so much about this business. Even his match with your husband (Jon Moxley), that match was so good. Joey proves time and time again that he's ready for any opportunity that's put on his way. He's awesome. And with him, he always pushes me to step outside of the box. Because sometimes I can be a little complacent, and I can be a little shy and a little nervous.
"I am very shy and very nervous. I've definitely gotten better with our feud, after our tag team was over I became a lot more confident 'I'm going to kick some ass.' I've gotten more intense. I will say, before that, I was more 'oh, I don't know if I should do this or how do I do that?' And Joey would definitely, basically help me step outside the box and be taken more serious for sure."
Sonny Kiss also credited Janela, their feud, and her character development within the feud in making her realize she could still be both tough and feminine. Kiss reflected on how she used to be afraid to even work out, due to not wanting to come off as too masculine.
"I would stop working out because I felt like I was emasculating men," Kiss said. "I would pretend I wasn't as strong as I was. All my life, I would definitely try not to be seen in a masculine way. Being that I wasn't born a female, I wanted guys to be attracted to me still by just being me. So I felt like I had to be as womanly as possible, to be as feminine as possible, for them to find me somewhat attractive. It's so weird. That's bad. With this whole storyline and development of my character, the Beautiful Badass, it's literally making that statement now that 'I'm tough, I'm strong, I'm sexy and I'll still kick your ass.'
"Now that I've kind of developed the storyline with Joey and getting involved with all that blood, and just being inspired by Death Match wrestling and all these people that are going super, super hard on TV and really making a name for themselves. Really they're just going all out and, for lack of a better term, making an ass of themselves by not caring. I definitely use that as inspiration. I also just feel like too with my career going forward, I don't want to continuously be in the background. I want people to say 'Sonny can go too. Sonny's not just some filler wrestler. No, Sonny can go.' So that's what I wanted to portray and I wanted that to be real. And I really, really dug deep for that and I really felt, in my heart and soul, that it doesn't really matter how feminine I am and how strong I look. I can still be feminine and sexy."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Sessions with Renee Paquette and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription