Confidence. It’s a word synonymous with personalities such as Dwyane The Rock Johnson, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Muhammad Ali, Beyonce and of course my current favourite wrestling personality since December of last year, Rick Ross (Ross’ so good in fact, his promos will make Omos seem like Hiroshi freaking Tanahashi).
Another example of a confident person is a certain individual known for being an Irish lass kicker, a soulless senpai, being very good at Twitter before it was the app equivalent of Windows freaking Vista, and the word that pissed off Ric Flair during an episode of a podcast nobody listened to besides news aggregators (I feel ya guys), the man herself, Becky f**king Lynch.
Now, she is currently teaming up with two legends in Mis Stratusfaction and “So f**k your rules man” Lita and may be reaching her fashion sense level of over 9000, to quote Vegeta but once upon a time, Lynch wasn’t the confident type of character in WWE.
Despite her undeniable talent and passion for the sport, Lynch struggled to find her footing in the beginning (I mean just look at her in NXT debuting with a gimmick so stereotypical, she might as well have a bottle of Guinness in one hand and a potato on the other).
Look, she did have some fantastic series of matches with Sasha Banks, notably on NXT Takeover: Unstoppable (who can’t forget that awesome fatal four-way match featuring all of the four horsewomen at NXT Takeover: Rival) but she has always been kinda there from her start on the black and gold brand to even her first few years on the main roster.
Becky Lynch was called up to the main roster in 2015 alongside Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks as part of the divas’ revolution and as mentioned earlier, Lynch has been lost in the very deep sauce compared to her four women crew in Sasha Banks, Bayley and especially Charlotte Flair. And yes, she did become the first ever Smackdown women’s champion but let’s be honest, you probably went “oh, I forgot about that” after I mentioned her first women’s title win (and she went right back to her position before. Just being kinda there).
In 2018, Becky was winning match after match after match after match on a weekly basis on Smackdown, one of those victories being the Smackdown women’s champion, Carmella. However, after seeing her best friend Charlotte Flair added to the title match at SummerSlam, Becky was feeling some type of way about that decision.
Up until that point, Becky Lynch had a very likeable personality but she knew that personality ain’t gonna get her knocking on doors and being THE very BEST like no one ever was, to quote the Pokemon anime intro (unless your name is Mick Foley and if that’s the case, keep doing you my G).
From then on, Lynch realized she needed to step up her game but she had to find what was missing with her as a persona. What’s that thing that can definitely stand out amongst the rest? The answer was simple, confidence.
Like yea, she was best friends with Charlotte but she didn’t give a crap about that following her slapping the queen at Summerslam 2018 because she believed in herself achieving astronomical heights in her career even if it was jeopardizing her friendship with Flair. Becky has so much confidence in herself, she called herself “The Man” and you know what?
She deserves to be known as The Man of world wrestling entertainment. Suffice it to say, for the first time in her WWE run, The Man knew exactly who she was (no sh*t, Omar).
It’s because of that level of confidence and sheer determination that Becky went from participating in a meaningless women’s battle royal on Wrestlemania to LITERALLY main eventing that same event the following year.
The reason why I’m writing this is not that I’m getting to gloat about one of my favourite performers but rather that her story of struggling with confidence reminds me of my own journey.
Throughout my life, I never believed in myself and would always doubt everything I’ve said/done. This didn’t help when the devil known as imposter syndrome kick in and would go on a downward spiral like, “I’m so f**king awful. I clearly am not meant to do this. This person is definitely more talented so I stop doing what I’m doing. There’s no hope.” you know, doomer sh*t.
It was also around this time that I lost a chuck of hair on top which shattered any drop of confidence I had in myself.
Have I turned it around like Becky Lynch? GOD, I WISH. But thankfully, it’s a work in progress by focusing on positive aspects like working out, starting a podcast that I’ve always wanted to (which you can check it out here), writing bullsh*t pieces like this one and most importantly, lifting people up even when they needed it the most.
To quote Molly Belle, “Life is heavy. Some days it feels heavier than others. That’s just the way it goes” Nonetheless, Becky Lynch has shown me that one big snoop of confidence will get you a long way in life because if you don’t believe in yourself then who will?
