The Man has (lastly) come again round to WWE. After stepping away from wrestling for almost a 12 months, Becky Lynch made her triumphant return at WrestleMania, the place she teamed with fellow Irishwoman and protégé, Ladies’s Intercontinental Champion Lyra Valkyria, to seize the WWE Ladies’s Tag Workforce Championships.
“I took what I assumed was going to be three months off through the summer season, when my contract got here up,” Lych says of her absence. “I used to be like, ‘Okay, looks as if a great time to take just a little break, get some stuff finished.’ Then different issues got here up – I used to be filming ‘Star Trek,’ after which ‘Pleased Gilmore.’ There was speak [of a return] round Rumble time, however then on the final minute, I obtained a pores and skin situation. The subsequent massive occasion was WrestleMania, so it appeared to make sense, particularly if I may take Bayley out of the combination and spoil her goals. It felt doubly good.”
Per week after WrestleMania, Lynch took to the ring on “Monday Night time Uncooked” and gleefully confessed to attacking Bayley so she may exchange her as Valkyria’s Mania tag workforce companion. Although Lynch and Bayley are 2/4s of a casual group of wrestlers often known as “The 4 Horsewomen,” she says followers overestimate how shut they really are.
“Once we had been arising, ‘The 4 Horsewomen,’ we had been by no means a detailed alliance,” she explains. “Once you discuss ‘The 4 Horsewomen,’ it’s not like we had been a faction. We had been bold ladies who needed to vary the sport, change how issues had been finished, and be seen as the largest stars in wrestling, no matter gender.”
Even of their early days at NXT, Lynch says she felt Bayley didn’t have the identical win-at-all-costs mentality as the opposite Horsewomen. “That was most of our ambition. Bayley simply needed to be favored as a lot as attainable. I beat her up in 2014, and folks liked it. In 2019, she hit me within the again with a chair, and we have now not been in any approach pleasant since. In reality, we’ve been rivals in some capability.”
“Twice I’ve been referred to as to hitch a Warfare Video games workforce I had no enterprise being in, as a result of individuals needed me to deal with Bayley they usually knew that I may,” Lynch provides. “Now all people’s so shocked that I attacked the girl that I’ve been combating for years? By the way in which, ‘Harm CTRL’ managed zero injury. Exactly zero injury was managed. Mission failed, as a result of Bayley fails at most missions.”
At first, it appeared like Lynch’s plan went off with out a hitch: she efficiently took Bayley out of motion and changed her as Lyra Valkyria’s tag workforce companion, taking tag titles off longtime rivals Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez. Sadly for Lynch, Morgan and Rodriguez had been granted a rematch the next evening on “Monday Night time Uncooked,” the place Valkyria slipped up, costing herself and Lynch the tag titles after lower than 24 hours with the gold.
“Lyra undoes all of my work, loses the very subsequent day after I made her a double champ,” Lynch says. “What does anybody count on from me? In fact I’m gonna flip the lid.”
Lynch is not any stranger to what it takes to be a double champion: in 2019, she made historical past in the primary occasion of WrestleMania as the primary girl to carry each the Uncooked and SmackDown Ladies’s Championships concurrently. As a perfectionist with a championship-caliber pedigree, Lynch doesn’t respect Valkyria ruining her triumphant return.
“I’m the best feminine skilled wrestler of all time, that’s not simply me saying it,” boasts Lynch. “There’s documented proof, Sports activities Illustrated put out an inventory. Lyra was nowhere on that record. Then there was a ‘20 Best WWE Wrestlers of All Time,’ and naturally, I used to be on that record. No different girl was on it, however I used to be.”
Tensions boiled over, and the match was formally made: mentor versus protégé for the Intercontinental Title at “Backlash.” On a latest episode of “Monday Night time Uncooked,” Valkyria advised Lynch she already “is aware of [she’s] a greater wrestler than [her],” and that she hopes she’s going to be a greater particular person too. Lynch takes situation with the Champion’s evaluation of their state of affairs.
“Let’s have a look at Lyra’s observe file,” Lynch insists. “Let’s dive into this, really, as a result of Lyra was speaking about how she’s a greater wrestler than me, however the first two matches after she gained the Intercontinental Title, she misplaced. She misplaced these matches! What are you speaking about? You’re the perfect? You need to have given up that title. That girl needs to be embarrassed. She needs to be sitting along with her head in her palms, crying.”
“Then she goes and saddles up beside Bayley, decides that she’s going to be her tag workforce companion going into WrestleMania, with out contemplating me,” she continues. “I attempted to be good, I attempted to be good, I attempted to assist her. I got here again, I did all the great issues, regardless that this was sort of simmering behind my head. Now that you simply’re bringing it up, that simmer is attending to a boil. Once I say it out loud, it’s actually insane how a lot I’ve been wronged.”
As for whether or not or not their relationship is salvageable, Lynch says the ball is in Valkyria’s court docket.
“That might be on her,” Lynch says. “When you consider it, I’m actually the one which’s been attacked repeatedly. She’s been popping out right here and attacking my character, telling me what a horrible human being I’m. I haven’t finished the identical to her. I’ve mentioned she’s misguided, that she fell below the improper affect. I’ve mentioned that she is ungrateful and disrespectful, which she is, however I’ve not attacked her character in the identical approach that she has attacked mine.”
Her expectations for reconciliation? “If she is prepared to get down on her knees and apologize and say ‘I’m so sorry, Becky, I notice you’re the best of all time. I notice how fantastic you’re. I notice I’d don’t have anything in my life if it wasn’t for you. Thanks for each morsel of meals that I eat, as a result of I get to eat that with the cash that I make from wrestling, which I wouldn’t make if it wasn’t for you following your dream. Thanks for the whole lot you’ve sacrificed and suffered by means of to permit me to have a dream that I could make come true. And for taking me below your wing, to do it in the way in which that I’ve finished it, which is profitable, however not as profitable as you, Becky. I’ll by no means be as profitable as you.’”
No matter what her relationship with Valkyria seems to be like after “Backlash,” Lynch is prepared and prepared to defend her title when she turns into the brand new Ladies’s Intercontinental Champion.
“A number of NXT wrestlers have come as much as ‘Uncooked.’ Giulia, Stephanie [Vaquer] and Roxanne [Perez], they’re all newer,” Lynch explains. “Positive, allow them to indulge in my presence. In the event that they need to step up, I’ll resolve an applicable time and place, and I’ll take them on and present them how way more they need to be taught. They’ll get higher from it, since you be taught extra in defeat than you’ll ever be taught from a win.”
Although Lynch is used to education wrestlers within the ring, she was excited to look at professionals at work in a unique medium: performing. In December 2024, Lynch revealed she’d joined the forged of the upcoming “Star Trek” collection “Starfleet Academy.”
“I’m undecided how a lot I can provide away, apart from it was an incredible expertise,” she says. “I’m on the bridge crew, and filming on the bridge, it was one of the crucial wonderful units I’ve ever been on. Alex Kurtzman, the director and author, is such an exquisite particular person to work with and be taught from. Paul Giamatti is there, Holly Hunter. Simply being of their presence, studying from them, working reverse them, was wonderful.”
Although she wasn’t a diehard fan earlier than boarding the collection, Lynch says she got here up in a “Trek”-loving family. “I grew up when ‘Star Trek’ was one of many two reveals that was on TV in Eire, on no matter 4 channels we had, so it was at all times on within the background. I can’t say that I sat down and watched, however I did love the flicks. And Colm Meaney. All of us love Colm Meaney, any time he was on, you sit down and watch that.”
As the latest member of the huge “Star Trek” universe, Lynch was in flip in a position to introduce her family, husband (fellow WWE wrestler Seth Rollins), and 4-year-old daughter Roux, to the world of “Trek.” “They got here to set sooner or later. Roux was just a little overwhelmed by the scale of the whole lot, I feel, however it was superior.”
“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” was one in all a number of initiatives Lynch tackled whereas on a break from wrestling. In January, she took to Instagram to disclose a shock position in “Pleased Gilmore 2,” which arrives on Netflix July 25.
“That forged is insane,” she says. “The world I obtained to play in was ridiculous and fantastic and extremely enjoyable. The time on that set was wonderful, seeing Adam Sandler and the way he conducts himself as such a star in that phrase, but in addition so variety to all people. The environment and tone that he units on set is unbelievable, after which he’s leaping in, rewriting stuff, serving to the director. He’s doing the whole lot, it’s unimaginable to look at.”
Lynch isn’t the one skilled wrestler in “Pleased Gilmore 2.” All Elite Wrestling’s Maxwell Jacob Friedman (MJF) additionally has a job within the movie. As for whether or not or not she crossed paths with MJF on set? “I did. You already know, a really good boy. Nice chats. In fact, he is aware of he’d lose at [a promo battle], however we had nice chats. Sadly, it was approach earlier than this occurred, however I really feel like he would fully agree with the whole lot that I’m saying about Lyra.”
“Starfleet Academy” and “Pleased Gilmore 2” aren’t Lynch’s first forays into performing. She graduated from the Dublin Institute of Know-how with a theatre arts diploma in 2012, labored as a stunt performer on “Vikings” previous to WWE fame, and even appeared as wrestling aficionado Cyndi Lauper in an episode of “Younger Rock.”
“I really like the collaboration of it, that’s what it comes right down to,” she says of the performing world. “The inventive collaboration, that you simply get to work with and bounce concepts off of various individuals and see them come to life, that you simply get to strive issues. In wrestling, it’s a dwell medium, so that you get one shot to make it. Fortunately, I’m a one-take sort of gal.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.