Hotseat: Nyla Rose
IT’S A WRESTLING cliché that fans have heard countless times over the years, with varying levels of genuineness: “We’ve never seen anyone like [insert name here].”
But, in the case of Nyla Rose, it’s especially true.
As the first openly transgender performer to sign with a major wrestling company, Rose is breaking new barriers in the sport. In an era when women’s wrestling continues to be redefined, Rose, who began her in-ring career presenting as a man, has gone a step further by redefining what it means to be a woman wrestler.
Rose achieved another historic milestone in February, when she defeated Riho to become the second AEW Women’s champion. But even if you didn’t know Rose’s backstory—and many fans don’t—it’s hard not to be impressed by the 37-year-old Washington, D.C., native. With formal training both in acting and martial arts, Rose presents a combination of legitimacy, showmanship, and dedication that many a wrestling promoter would covet.
Despite the outsized on-screen persona of the “Native Beast,” Rose, who fell in love with wrestling as a child, remains humble and hungry to learn.
Surrounded in AEW’s women’s division by world-class workers like Riho, veterans like Emi Sakura, and budding prospects like Kris Statlander, Rose knows she has to work doubly hard to keep up … and to keep her title.
In this recent interview with PWI Senior Writer Al Castle, Rose discusses the steep “learning curve” she’s faced in the first year of AEW’s existence, the changing face of women’s wrestling, and the pride she feels in representing more than one disenfranchised group of people.
Castle: How is AEW in terms of maintaining a personal life? The reputation for pro wrestling, and certainly WWE, for so long has been that, if you want to have a personal life, a family life, a marriage, then this isn’t the lifestyle for you. But I feel AEW has changed that so much.
Yeah, so that’s kind of how the life of a pro wrestler is. You make that sacrifice of a personal life for your career. It’s still pretty tricky to navigate that, but AEW is definitely a little bit more conducive to having a personal
