Becky Lynch just published her life story. This month’s events could be worth a chapter or two in her next memoir.
The Irish WWE superstar visited the White House and spent time with President Joe Biden on St. Patrick’s Day. The next day, she announced she had passed her U.S. citizenship test. And during the weekend of April 6, at WrestleMania XL, she’ll wrestle one of the biggest matches of her life.
Yet of all her accomplishments — the championships, the crowd-pleasing moments, the main events — she said the piece of work she’s proudest of is her memoir, “The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl,” published Tuesday.
“In the ring, people would expect that I know what I’m doing,” Lynch told the Sentinel last week. “I am a trained wrestler. I’ve been doing it for many years. But I’m not a trained writer. I think I’ve crafted a story that is engaging and page-turning and that people will enjoy, and more than anything, I think people will get something from it.”
Lynch retraces her life from younger days in Ireland — she writes that she’s a mix of her dreamer father and more practical mother —through early training, falling in and out of love with wrestling, then rising to the top of her sport.
The book is an entertaining mix of humility, bravado, humor and quips. In spots, it almost reminds you how professional wrestling is a small world – Lynch’s first wrestling trainer and one-time boyfriend was future WWE superstar Finn Balor, and early chapters are sprinkled with many names familiar to current fans.
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Confidence and perseverance are major traits in Lynch’s story.
“I think throughout all of [the writing], I realized how much unnecessary worrying I did, but then I have come out the other end and achieved everything and more than I wanted to,” Lynch said. “And then to have made all of these relationships along the way, and have them still be an important part of my life, people like Natalya, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Finn Balor, all these relationships. And now for us all to have arrived in WWE and working together toward the same kind of thing is pretty great.”
It has taken Lynch to places she never expected such as the White House, for example. Lynch was there as part of a celebration of Ireland and Irish-American relations. She exchanged “a few pleasantries” with Biden, but spent even more time being wowed by the structure and its legacy.
“I wouldn’t say I was awestruck, not at all,” Lynch said. “I was just very fascinated with the White House in general, being in that building where so much history has happened, where some of the most important decisions that affected all of our lives globally have happened. I don’t think you can take anything like that lightly. It was fantastic.”
After all of the major events these last few weeks, now it’s time for WrestleMania, the biggest weekend of the wrestling year. Lynch’s match with Rhea Ripley will be a major focus of the two-night show. Lynch will be fighting to regain the championship she hasn’t held for two years, all while Ripley has become one of the most talked-about stars in the business.
“When I have a chip on my shoulder, I do my best work,” Lynch said. “Going into this match with Rhea Ripley, a lot of people are doubting me, not remembering who the hell I am, and it’s up to me to remind them. As much as I doubt myself, whenever anybody else does, there’s that contrarian in me that rises up, that rages against the machine, whatever that machine is.”
It’s easy to forget, seeing women in main events was a relative rarity just a few years ago. Lynch battled Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair in the first women’s WrestleMania main event only five years ago. Today, Lynch is believed to be one of WWE’s highest-paid stars of any gender. When Mercedes Moné (then known as Sasha Banks) left WWE, it set off a bidding war that ended with All Elite Wrestling making her the highest paid woman in pro wrestling, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
When the Sentinel asked Lynch about Moné’s rich contract, she cast it as a positive for all women in the wrestling business.
“I think that’s an important part, getting paid equally for the equal work and the equal position we are at right now,” Lynch said. “Women’s evolutions and revolutions are fine and well, but making sure that they equate to contracts and financial reward for these things, when we are doing equal work, is hugely important.”
The destination of Lynch’s life may be fame and fortune, but the process of writing a memoir has made her reflect more on the journey and the lessons she has learned along the way.
When asked what advice she would give her younger self, she replied: “Believe in yourself. Don’t spend as much time doubting yourself, because it’s just wasted time. And don’t worry as much. Sometimes life has its own timing. And it’s hard to figure out if the worrying in some way helps, because it makes you stay on alert, but I feel like it’s probably just wasted thoughts.”
jreddick@orlandosentinel.com
