WWE Superstar Rhea Ripley recently spoke with Fox Sports Australia to discuss a variety of professional wrestling related topics, including almost giving up early in her career.

You can check out some highlights from the interview below:

On almost giving up: “I was in this really dark place where I was like centimeters from just absolutely giving up and wanting it to all stop and I wanted to go home. There was a lot of things that went into that. I just sort of had to change my mentality and realize I had worked so hard to get to the point that I was at that I wasn’t going to let these things stop me and I had to stop listening to everyone and had to sort of do it my way again and believe in myself and not listen to everyone that throws criticism my way. That is the best thing that could have happened to me, I just sort of changed my mentality and just didn’t care anymore.”

On criticism that she looks too masculine: “The whole thing is women should have long hair. I hate that stereotype. I hate when men say grow your hair out. No. This is my body, this is my choice. I do whatever the hell I want with my body and you can’t tell me what to do because I love myself, I don’t really care if you don’t love me. That’s so strong and I love when I get tagged in photos of women and they’ve cut their hair in the same way because ‘Rhea I found the confidence to cut my hair’, that’s just insane to me. I’m really proud and happy to be on this platform where I can help people as well. I get messages, tweets, posts that I’m tagged in all the time about people and their confidence growing because they’ve seen me, which is absolutely insane.”

On Triple H taking over creative in WWE: “It feels like NXT again. It feels like that family environment that I really loved about NXT and miss at the same time. He’s very hands-on, extremely hands-on, which is something I really appreciate. I love being able to go out there and talk to him and just get his opinion on things and learn from him every single Monday, whether it be something small or something big. I’m constantly learning every time I talk to him and that’s something I find so important in this business. It’s really important to have Triple H around and to me he feels like that father figure, which is really, really cool. It’s starting to feel a lot like NXT and the environment seems so happy and so excited to be at work which makes a huge difference.”

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