KiLynn King has a heartfelt reason for looking up to Saraya.
In an interview with Andrew Thompson for POST Wrestling, KiLynn King spoke about potentially facing off with Saraya now that she’s returned to wrestling. King then shared why she admired Saraya, noting that they both shared fair complexions and it made King more accepting of herself.
“It would be so cool [to have Saraya’s return match]. So, this is gonna sound like such a stupid reason to love her. But I remember when she debuted in NXT, I was obsessed with how pale she was. Well, it sounds so stupid but as a woman who goes through mental abuse towards herself because of her looks and things that people always seem to think is wrong with her… My family’s Irish. My dad is a Native American, he’s Cherokee and Shawnee and my mom’s side of the family, it’s like pure Irish. So I got my mom’s genetics. I got my dad’s height but I got my mom’s coloring. My entire life, I have been super, super pale. Nothing I have done has worked. I did tanners, works terrible, I did tanning beds. I could go to a tanning bed for two, three months and I would never get any darker. It just wasn’t in my genetics. I wasn’t meant to be tan.”
“But even before wrestling, I was an entertainer. I did theater, I did dance, musical theater and I was constantly doing auditions and camps and stuff like that and the comment that I would always get was, ‘You should get tanner. You should use a tanner or something because it just, you know, it’s not a good look. People look better when they’re tan’ and I always got so frustrated with that comment because I’m like, I’m born the way I was born. Why the hell is being pale such a problem? But that’s just entertainment.”
“They’re always trying to nitpick the things that they think will make you look better and to me, I thought I looked fine pale so I didn’t understand it and I remember when she debuted in NXT and I heard her story about — and I could have misheard this but from what I heard, she tried out for NXT or for WWE and she came looking completely different than she usually looks. I think they said she had a different hair color and she had put tanner on and they told her, they’re like, ‘Hey, we don’t know what’s going on but this isn’t you’ and the next time she came back, she was herself. She had her dark hair, she was pale and then she got signed. So to me, and the fact that — that was her whole thing, like I’m different and I’m okay with that, I’m a different kind of female wrestler and that’s what’s gonna get me over, I was so obsessed with that because that was the first time — Chyna’s the one who made me feel secure about being big, like being a big, strong girl. Paige is the one who made okay with the way I looked, like coloring-wise.”
“I was just like, okay, I got bright ass red hair and I’m pale as hell and that’s okay and then also too, just tapping into being a little bit different and not being scared to do that so, when I saw her debut at AEW and the question mark was up in the air like, is she here as just a personality? Or is she here as a wrestler? I was like, I’m not gonna waste any time and I’m gonna tweet that and send it out because what an honor it would be to wrestle the person that made me okay with being a pale person… Emotionally, you’d be surprised how much that affects you so the fact that she made me okay with that, it wasn’t a thing that bothered me anymore, it was a big deal to me.”
Read More: Saraya Confirms She Talked To Triple H, Thought About Returning To WWE Before She Signed With AEW
