Toronto Sun: The last hurrah for Trish Stratus and the WWE
Courtesy Steve Simmons / Toronto Sun
This is it — the final match, she calls it — the coming-out-of-retirement bout to retire one more time.
This is it — one last blast — the last time you’ll see Trish Status in the ring. Wrestling, that is.
Until the next time. There’s almost always a next time in her world of sport and fantasy.
But here is Stratus now, the one-time suburban Toronto tomboy, married and mom of two, the Diva of the Decade in the WWE, the three-time Babe of the Year, the seven-time WWE champion, the Hall of Famer, back on stage on Sunday night at SummerSlam, doing what made her famous one last time.
She turns 44 in December and admits she feels her age on occasion — especially in training for her SummerSlam grudge match against Charlotte Flair. It’s one legend against the daughter of another legend. It’s here in Toronto at the Scotiabank Arena, where she only has to travel downtown, not fly anywhere, to get to work on Sunday.
She’s nervous and excited and thrilled for the opportunity: It’s 19 years after she first began with the WWE, but give Stratus time to prepare and she can pull off just about anything.
When she was picked to host the Canada Walk of Fame event in 2006, she was asked how she wanted to open the show. She said she wanted to do a song-and-dance number, the way so many of these kinds of shows begin.
“Can you sing?” the organizers asked.
“No,” she said, “but I can train to do it.”
And train she did. The event began with Stratus singing and dancing.
“I pulled it off,” she said. “In front of a lot of people, Eugene Levy was there, Jann Arden was there, I got it done.”
Now she gets up in the morning, drops off her kids — Max, 5, and Madi 21/2 — at school, operates her business and, in between all that, trains like she hasn’t trained in years for her match against Flair, who was born into the wrestling business and is 10 years her junior.
“As you get older, you decide this is it,” she said. “I don’t need to keep coming back. I’ve had my ride. But this scenario was so special. To face a superstar like Charlotte Flair at this point of my life. In Toronto. At the second biggest pay-per-view of the year (WrestleMania is first). What could be more right?
“To face the greatest of her generation — and it’s been argued that I was the greatest of my generation — it’s a pretty unique matchup. Everything is aligning for this and with my age — how much longer can I do this or want to do this? This is the perfect time to do it.”
Her son knows Mommy used to be a wrestler, her daughter not really, but they don’t know exactly what that means. They’ve never seen her in the ring. Stratus thinks they’re too young to watch on Sunday night and she’s not sure how they would react if they saw “Mommy slapped across the face.”
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Stratus hasn’t been in the ring in eight years for a singles match. She’s made numerous appearances over the years for WWE since temporarily retiring in 2006.
“Once you’re part of the family, though, you’re always part of the family,” she said.
She got called by Vince McMahon, the genius behind the WWE, who had this idea: Why not bring back Stratus in Toronto for one last hurrah? Why not have her face Flair in a bout that isn’t for a title of any kind — a rivalry built on television the way all the best WWE rivalries are made.
McMahon came up with the idea. Then Stratus had to go to work with her trainer to not just get in proper condition to wrestle, but to work with her trainer on the match itself.
“It’s like we’re one segment of a show and we’ve got to get that part right,” she said.
Trish Stratus got almost everything right in her WWE days and she knows that now, even if she’s embarrassed to talk about her influence, just how many women are now part of the wrestling culture.
She was at the Royal Rumble not long ago when a number of female wrestlers came up to her and told her they wanted to become wrestlers because of her.
“It’s humbling and gratifying to hear (that) all your hard work touched someone,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a wrestler when I grew up. I grew up on Miss Elizabeth. That’s who the women in wrestling were. I wanted to be a doctor.
“Now little kids come up to me and say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be wrestler.’ It’s pretty crazy to hear that.”
This is a giant weekend for the giant company that is WWE in Toronto. They have shows four nights in a row in a city that has forever been wrestling-crazy.
Article content
“It’s kind of insane what’s happening here,” she said. “Toronto has always been a hotbed for wrestling, but four nights in a row? Maybe in New York you could pull this off. I don’t know if you could do this anywhere else.
“There’s a lot of buzz about the event, about my match. Personally, I had to dig deep to find my inner-Trish Stratus again. I had to do that. I’m a mom now. ‘I’m a bad-ass mom,’ I keep telling myself. I had to find that inner fire in me.
“You think, ‘Can I do it? Am I able to do it?’ I watch the tapes (of training) and I see it coming together. It’s like my brain is two steps behind my body, but then your body surprises you. And you think, ‘Holy smokes, after two kids and all these years, I can still do this.’
“Sometimes I don’t know how I’m doing all of this. Being a mom, running a business, it takes crazy time-management. Now you throw in training and preparing for this. It’s been a lot. But it’s been fun. I feel like I’m doing this for the moms out there. For every mom, maybe, who’s lost themselves. I had to find that bad-ass wrestler inside of me. It took some time to get there.”
On Sunday at the Scotiabank Arena, at SummerSlam, her husband, Ron, some friends and close family will be part of her small entourage at the event. Stratus and her sister are a year apart. She has two male cousins, the same ages, who grew up together.
“I watched wrestling, I loved wrestling as a kid,” she said. “We all did.”
She just never thought she’d be a big part of the biggest show in town.
And this is her goodbye in the ring.
The last time. Unless, of course, they call again.
https://torontosun.com/sports/wrestling/simmons-the-last-hurrah-for-trish-stratus-and-the-wwe?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1565215092
This is it — the final match, she calls it — the coming-out-of-retirement bout to retire one more time.
This is it — one last blast — the last time you’ll see Trish Status in the ring. Wrestling, that is.
Until the next time. There’s almost always a next time in her world of sport and fantasy.
But here is Stratus now, the one-time suburban Toronto tomboy, married and mom of two, the Diva of the Decade in the WWE, the three-time Babe of the Year, the seven-time WWE champion, the Hall of Famer, back on stage on Sunday night at SummerSlam, doing what made her famous one last time.
She turns 44 in December and admits she feels her age on occasion — especially in training for her SummerSlam grudge match against Charlotte Flair. It’s one legend against the daughter of another legend. It’s here in Toronto at the Scotiabank Arena, where she only has to travel downtown, not fly anywhere, to get to work on Sunday.
She’s nervous and excited and thrilled for the opportunity: It’s 19 years after she first began with the WWE, but give Stratus time to prepare and she can pull off just about anything.
When she was picked to host the Canada Walk of Fame event in 2006, she was asked how she wanted to open the show. She said she wanted to do a song-and-dance number, the way so many of these kinds of shows begin.
“Can you sing?” the organizers asked.
“No,” she said, “but I can train to do it.”
And train she did. The event began with Stratus singing and dancing.
“I pulled it off,” she said. “In front of a lot of people, Eugene Levy was there, Jann Arden was there, I got it done.”
Now she gets up in the morning, drops off her kids — Max, 5, and Madi 21/2 — at school, operates her business and, in between all that, trains like she hasn’t trained in years for her match against Flair, who was born into the wrestling business and is 10 years her junior.
“As you get older, you decide this is it,” she said. “I don’t need to keep coming back. I’ve had my ride. But this scenario was so special. To face a superstar like Charlotte Flair at this point of my life. In Toronto. At the second biggest pay-per-view of the year (WrestleMania is first). What could be more right?
“To face the greatest of her generation — and it’s been argued that I was the greatest of my generation — it’s a pretty unique matchup. Everything is aligning for this and with my age — how much longer can I do this or want to do this? This is the perfect time to do it.”
Her son knows Mommy used to be a wrestler, her daughter not really, but they don’t know exactly what that means. They’ve never seen her in the ring. Stratus thinks they’re too young to watch on Sunday night and she’s not sure how they would react if they saw “Mommy slapped across the face.”
Article content
Stratus hasn’t been in the ring in eight years for a singles match. She’s made numerous appearances over the years for WWE since temporarily retiring in 2006.
“Once you’re part of the family, though, you’re always part of the family,” she said.
She got called by Vince McMahon, the genius behind the WWE, who had this idea: Why not bring back Stratus in Toronto for one last hurrah? Why not have her face Flair in a bout that isn’t for a title of any kind — a rivalry built on television the way all the best WWE rivalries are made.
McMahon came up with the idea. Then Stratus had to go to work with her trainer to not just get in proper condition to wrestle, but to work with her trainer on the match itself.
“It’s like we’re one segment of a show and we’ve got to get that part right,” she said.
Trish Stratus got almost everything right in her WWE days and she knows that now, even if she’s embarrassed to talk about her influence, just how many women are now part of the wrestling culture.
She was at the Royal Rumble not long ago when a number of female wrestlers came up to her and told her they wanted to become wrestlers because of her.
“It’s humbling and gratifying to hear (that) all your hard work touched someone,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a wrestler when I grew up. I grew up on Miss Elizabeth. That’s who the women in wrestling were. I wanted to be a doctor.
“Now little kids come up to me and say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be wrestler.’ It’s pretty crazy to hear that.”
This is a giant weekend for the giant company that is WWE in Toronto. They have shows four nights in a row in a city that has forever been wrestling-crazy.
Article content
“It’s kind of insane what’s happening here,” she said. “Toronto has always been a hotbed for wrestling, but four nights in a row? Maybe in New York you could pull this off. I don’t know if you could do this anywhere else.
“There’s a lot of buzz about the event, about my match. Personally, I had to dig deep to find my inner-Trish Stratus again. I had to do that. I’m a mom now. ‘I’m a bad-ass mom,’ I keep telling myself. I had to find that inner fire in me.
“You think, ‘Can I do it? Am I able to do it?’ I watch the tapes (of training) and I see it coming together. It’s like my brain is two steps behind my body, but then your body surprises you. And you think, ‘Holy smokes, after two kids and all these years, I can still do this.’
“Sometimes I don’t know how I’m doing all of this. Being a mom, running a business, it takes crazy time-management. Now you throw in training and preparing for this. It’s been a lot. But it’s been fun. I feel like I’m doing this for the moms out there. For every mom, maybe, who’s lost themselves. I had to find that bad-ass wrestler inside of me. It took some time to get there.”
On Sunday at the Scotiabank Arena, at SummerSlam, her husband, Ron, some friends and close family will be part of her small entourage at the event. Stratus and her sister are a year apart. She has two male cousins, the same ages, who grew up together.
“I watched wrestling, I loved wrestling as a kid,” she said. “We all did.”
She just never thought she’d be a big part of the biggest show in town.
And this is her goodbye in the ring.
The last time. Unless, of course, they call again.
https://torontosun.com/sports/wrestling/simmons-the-last-hurrah-for-trish-stratus-and-the-wwe?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1565215092
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