Madison Rayne announced her retirement from the wrestling business at IMPACT’s Hard To Kill pay-per-view and now looks ahead at life after wrestling, but could that include one more achievement in wrestling?
“The Queen Bee” leaves as one of the company’s most successful and decorated women’s wrestlers ever, as her accolades include being a five-time Knockouts Champion and two-time Knockouts Tag Team Champion for starters. She also is one of the longest-tenured Knockouts in company history and knows all good things must come to an end, but said being inducted into the IMPACT Wrestling Hall Of Fame would be a nice cap to her career.
Rayne spoke with WrestleZone’s Bill Pritchard after her announcement, and she was asked how she’d like to be remembered in wrestling. Rayne says that she hopes she could be there for inspiration and collaboration for the current generation, adding that she just hopes people remember she worked hard and remained humble.
“The opportunities that I’ve been given, I’d like to think I’ve been given all of them because I worked hard and I was easy to work with. And so, I’d like to think that that would be part of my legacy, that I was easy to work with, that I was someone that everybody enjoyed being in the ring and in the locker room with, that I was somebody who was giving,” Rayne said. “I’ll never ever forget my first night at TNA, having my tryout match against Awesome Kong and it was when she was doing the ‘Awesome Kong challenge’ and these local and independent women were coming in. They were getting three or four-minute matches, not much offense, and not much of an opportunity. But she made sure that I had enough time and enough opportunity in that match to really shine. And so that’s something that I’ve always carried with me and I hope that’s something that other women who I’ve worked with feel that I’ve done too.”
“If IMPACT Wrestling wanted to put me in the Hall Of Fame in 2021, I’m sure that wouldn’t be an awful way to put a bow on this fantastic career.”
After agreeing that her resume and tenure in the business would make her a worthy nominee this year, Rayne joked that this could be the start of the #WhyNotMadisonRayne social media campaign.
Check out our full interview with Madison Rayne at the top of this post (and use the hashtag on Twitter!)
