Debbie Keitel: It’s Incredible To See And Support Irish Women On Wrestling Television

Debbie Keitel reflects on working with Lyra Valkyria as the Woke Queens and seeing her succeed in NXT.

Debbie Keitel looks back on working with Lyra Valkyria.

Prior to Valkyria’s run in NXT, she was previously a member of the NXT UK roster along with her close friend Debbie Keitel. The pair had become one of the hottest acts in Irish wrestling as The Woke Queens, a heel tag team that terrorised the Irish scene. Since Keitel left NXT UK, she has been a familiar face on both the Irish and UK scenes, holding the OTT Women’s World Championship for over a year. 

While speaking to Fightful’s Corey Brennan in a recent interview, Keitel was asked about how The Woke Queens came to be.

“It kind of just happened. We were in OTT but we we didn’t really have a long-term storyline and we kind of said to ourselves, what if we like joined forces or formed a group?’ How could we make this last longer than just one match? Joe (Carbray) had pitched to us. He basically needed two heels. He said, ‘I just need you to do this one thing and then we’ll put you in different directions.’ We were both kind of like, ‘no, this is so unique. It’s so different.’ So we kind of pushed for us to stay together. We started just attacking people on social media. We started getting called Woke Queens. We were like, ‘hmm, what could we call ourselves?’ then someone, one of our camera people were like, well, why don’t you just call yourselves woke queens? Because everyone’s already calling you that. Bingo. Okay. So we just went with that. And yeah, it just kind of happened. We did one interview in OTT where we formed an alliance. We started to build form there, but it was really when we kind of debuted in Eve that the character perspective of Woke Queens came to be. You had Aoife (Lyra Valkyria), who was the serious wrestler and, she really means business. Then you had me, this loud mouth, coffee drinking, charismatic queen. Then just the combination of the two of us brought out the best in both of us and being able to kind of do a lot of trial and error things between the two companies. We really kind of found who we wanted to be. I think, honestly, if it wasn’t for the amount of work that we put in into promo and content and stuff online, I don’t think we would have been as successful as we were. But it was so funny how it just started off as the two of us trying to think of an idea. Then six months down the line, we were everywhere. It was huge. It just, like, we just took off.”

Debbie was then asked about the success of Lyra in WWE NXT, where he is the current Women’s Champion. Keitel noted that she will awlays be a congratulator over a hater and says it’s incredible to be see and support Irish women on wrestling TV.

“It’s incredible. I’ll always be a congratulator over a hater. I love to see people doing well, especially my closest friends. It’s incredible. Like every time I turn on a new channel, one of my friends is wrestling in TNA or they’re wrestling in NXT or they’re in the WWE. They’re everywhere. So it’s incredible to be able to see and support that as well. The fact that Lyra is Irish as well is a plus. But yeah, it’s incredible to see that, we have like a handful of women on this island and we’re getting fewer and fewer as the years go by. So to be able to see an Irish woman on our TV screens is incredible. The fact that she’s my best friend as well is pretty cool.”

Valkyria is currently in the midst of an angle in NXT with Tatum Paxley, who has become obsessed with the NXT Women’s Champion.

Elsewhere in the same interview with Fightful, Keitel discussed working with Rhea Ripley in 2019. You can read more here.