NXT Women’s Champ Bayley called into Busted Open with Doug Mortman and Dave LaGreca and talked about the upcoming NXT Takeover” Dallas special, Wrestlemania and more.
Bayley on NXT TakeOver: Dallas:
“We were in San Jose last year in front of a crowd of 5,000, just kind of trying it out WrestleMania weekend. It was such a success that I remember being in a tag match that night and it’s my hometown crowd, and then watching Charlotte and Sasha in a women’s title match and I was like, ‘Man, I need to be in that match’. I wanted to be in a championship match so now, one year later, that NXT has just – we’ve grown so much in this past year and now we have our own pay-per-view, our own TakeOver on the WWE Network, to kick off WrestleMania weekend. It’s huge because we’re going to start the weekend hot and just really set the bar just like we tried to in Brooklyn, same as SummerSlam weekend. But now I’m in this spot, the spot that I wanted to be and I told myself that’s where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in the championship picture and now I’m the champion, so I really need to prove to myself that this is where I belong.”
On what her matches with Sasha Banks mean to her:
“I still get choked up about it, thinking about Brooklyn and then thinking about the Iron Man match. No matter what happens – if I were to lose my title, if I retain my title, if Sasha loses her match at WrestleMania – anything that we do within the next five years, no matter what, we’ll always be a part of history because of TakeOver: Respect and it’s really cool.”
On Triple H’s relationship with the NXT roster:
“He’s the best. We call him – well, not everybody – but Sasha and I call him ‘Papa’. He’s just believed in us since the very beginning and I don’t just mean the women. Obviously, he’s given us the best platform possible and given us all these opportunities, but he believes in NXT so much. We are his family. We are his children and it’s really, really cool. Not everybody gets to see it, but before the shows, he’s going over just telling us what he wants out of us, what he wants out of the product, and how far we can go. He believes in us and it’s shown. He’s taking us all over the world, all over the country here, and we’re traveling so much. It’s because he believes in us. He went out on a limb and put everything he had into making the Performance Center and giving us that and now he’s putting his trust in us to put on these shows all around the world for different fans to see. He has such a great mind and he has this vision and it’s working. He just thinks differently than anybody else and he really, really believes in us and I think that’s a huge reason why we’ve been such a success because we want to do good for him. My matches with Sasha, we wanted to make him proud. If he was happy with it and he was proud of us, we know we did a good job.”
On what it’s like seeing the other 3 “Horsewomen” in a match at WM32:
“I love NXT. It’s been an honor and a privilege traveling the world with them. We’re such a family here, but my ultimate goal is definitely to be up there and seeing them in a match at WrestleMania when you’re thinking last year, we were just watching it together on the floor of WrestleMania. I just saw a picture of AT&T Stadium and they’re, like, right front and center and it’s just amazing what a year does and what hard work and dedication does. It makes me so proud, like I feel like I’m part of the show. But, I know that after the end of the show, I’m just going to go back to my hotel and just think, ‘What can I do to be there next year?’”
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Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
