HYAN Reflects On Her Connection With Roxanne Perez And AQA Due To Their Time Training Under Booker T

HYAN reflects on the camaraderie between women’s wrestlers from Texas, specifically those who have trained at the Reality of Wrestling school with Booker T. 

HYAN continues to grow as a performer but she also had a great foundation as a wrestler, starting out with Reality of Wrestling. NXT’s Roxanne Perez also got her start with Booker T and they now work together every Tuesday on WWE NXT. 

During a recent interview with Fightful’s Scott Edwards, HYAN reflected on her relationship with Roxanne Perez and fellow ROW trainee AQA, saying that they remain close friends and continue to motivate each other.

“It’s awesome. It does mean a lot to me. The reason why the women we have in Texas are so good is because; one, our trainers do a very good job of treating us like equals when we’re in training,” she said. “No one goes easy on us because we’re girls. Even if they do, the guys will get yelled at. I think it’s so funny. We’ll be in the ring and you’ll see a guy go ‘eh’ [imitates a light strike], not wanting to hit the girl, and he’ll literally get yelled at, ‘Hit her hard, hit her how you would.’ Because we have that equality in how we train the girls, I think that’s why they come out so strong. I feel there is this culture of camaraderie between the girls. Roxanne is one of my best friends. AQA, who was on the scene. We all have a little group called Girl’s House and we all literally push each other. Because we’re all friends, we all have a comfortability where we can tell each other, ‘Hey, you fucked up here in this match. What were you doing here? Let’s do this. That’s no really a good idea.’ 

“We can be direct with each other and not hurt each other’s feelings and know that it comes from a place of ‘I want you to be better,’ not a personal attack,” she continued. “Because we have that friendship, we can have the hard conversations where, if you’re wrestling somebody for the first time, maybe you wouldn’t tell them ‘that wasn’t not good.’ We have those conversations because we’re all friends. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve hosted film study at my house where there is 20 trainees and we have a playlist of matches and we’re all going to go in and talk about why it’s good, what we learned from it, or sometimes we put in a match…we put in a comedy squash match, it was Will Ospreay against Mad Kurt at RevPro. I put it on the playlist and said, ‘this is a match that is comedic, it’s also a squash match, but it’s also a main event match. Let’s watch this match and see what we can take from it, why it was good, and why we like it.’ After, we watch the match, we take notes, and we go around and tells each other, ‘this is what I liked, this is what I learned.’ I feel that’s why the scene is so deep and so many amazing girls have come out and found success in wrestling. I’m so happy for them. It’s awesome.” 

AQA is currently on an indefinite hiatus from pro wrestling. Fans can learn more about that at this link. 

Roxanne Perez recently noted that during her appearance in the 2023 Royal Rumble match she began to feel like she belonged on the main stage. Read more here.

Fans can check out the full interview embedded above.