WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus appears on Lilian Garcia: Making Their Way to the Ring today, revealing her hard work as a pioneer of fitness modeling and talking to Lilian about her quick rise to stardom and true feelings on wearing a skirt.
Trish on her first fight:
I’ll never forget my first fight. She was really a lot bigger than me, and that’s what happened [laughs]. It was just a thing. I’m a little tough girl, I’ve always been…So I showed up in the parking lot. I got my ass whooped, and that was that.
She describes her initial reaction to a trainer’s suggestion:
She was my gym teacher and she was like, I think you’d be great at field hockey. I was like, the sticks and the skirts? The skirts? Eh skirts. I don’t want to wear a skirt. Funny enough, they always get me into the skirts. They want Trish Stratus to be in a skirt. So I played it.
Being one of the first fitness models:
There was this new industry. You’d go to these fitness magazines and always for women it was these women bodybuilders, which you could look at and get these workout plans and things like that and they’d tell you how to eat. But suddenly you would see women who were not bodybuilders. They were just fit females. This was a new industry. Now it’s not new. It’s called fitness modeling. But back in the day it was not a thing.
Trish talks about preparing for her first fitness photo shoot:
This is what I wanted to accomplish, and I had three months to train for it. It’s amazing what you can do with diet and exercise and commitment and dedication. That’s what I did. I ate, slept and trained for three months, while bartending, working a day job. Like, I worked at the gym, then I was bartending at night, and I was training…that’s why when motherhood hit, I was like, what are these women complaining about?! I’m up all night anyway. It was actually an easy transition for me.
On her quick rise to fitness stardom:
Immediately after that he signed me to a contract. From that first photo shoot, my very first cover came out of that.
Does she regret not going back to school after that?:
No. I feel like there was reason I got as much as I needed out of it. It was put there for the connections I made, and when we talk about the importance of education, I feel like I grew so much as a young adult in my university years. I learned about the real world. I don’t need a degree to say, this is what I got out of it, because as you know people have those degrees and they don’t do anything with them. I gained all I needed to gain out of those three years and then I guess somebody wanted me on a different path.
Stay tuned next Monday for part two of Lilian Garcia: Making Their Way to the Ring with Trish Stratus, on AfterBuzz TV! Lilian and Trish will dive into the former Diva’s WWE career and current pregnancy. You won’t want to miss it!
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.
