Can you imagine Angelina Love as a tomboy? Believe it or not, Love grew up in Canada “slightly tomboyish,” she said, and dates her love for pro wrestling to age 7.
“My sister and I were always into sports and such, but wrestling was my thing,” said Love, who will take part in one of the main-event matches at Top Rope Pro Wrestling’s New Year’s Chaos on Saturday, Jan. 5, 2013, at the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington.
Love will take on Katie Lea Burchill at Chaos, the first time the two former TNA rivals will meet as opponents in the ring.
Love and Burchill, then known as Winter, were involved in an extended storyline angle in TNA in 2010 that didn’t fully play out.
Love is very much looking forward to what she says will be an “awesome” match between the two at New Year’s Chaos.
“I’ve been pretty fortunate to have some pretty awesome matches and work some of the top women in the business. It’s been really fun,” said Love, before telling a story about how pro wrestling was not always meant to be for her.
She started training at a wrestling school at 18, and “after three weeks of training, I wanted to just quit,” said Love, and she actually did quit for several weeks, frustrated that she wasn’t getting it.
“Learning how to bump, I was landing on my tailbone and hitting my head and smashing my elbows. My elbows would be black, my tailbone would be so sore that I wouldn’t be able to walk up the three stairs from the garage to the house,” she said.
“I thought, Wow, I had thought that this would be easier. I’m a Virgo, so I’m the kind of person where learning is kind of frustrating to me. I’d rather just go into something and know exactly how to do it perfectly, as horrible as that sounds.”
But after quitting briefly, the mat beckoned her back.
“I just loved wrestling so much that after a few weeks, I was just, I need to get back in the ring and see if i can figure this out,” Love said. “Once I got back into the ring and started training, doing arm drags and realizing how to do this properly and do that properly, once you’re finally able to do things properly, you start to feel better about yourself and your learning abilities. So it got better from there.”
She hasn’t regretted it for a day – not that life in professional wrestling is at all easy.
For one, it’s not easy on the body.
“I’ve had more injuries than I’d wanted to ever get,” Love said.
And travel – “if you like to travel, it’s good. Some people get sick of it real quick. I still like it,” said Love. “For a lot of people, being away from home is tough. For me, I pretty much just say with my condo that I pay my cats’ rent, because they live here more than I do.”
She’s on the road a lot because she’s in demand. And Angelina Love is in demand because of the hard work that the former tomboy – who filled out quite nicely, for those keeping score at home – puts into her craft.
“Some people hate women’s wrestling, some people love it. It’s their opinion. I always go out there and do my best to give people reasons to love it,” Love said.
More online at www.TopRopeProWrestling.com.
Support AFP
Share
AFP
