ESPN and WWE broke the news earlier today that WWE Diva Torrie Wilson would be the next Superstar to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Torrie Wilson will join both The Honky Tonk Man and D-Generation X in the 2019 Hall of Fame on WrestleMania Eve.
The fitness competitor and model turned sports entertainer provided a sense of confidence when she entered the ring. The Boise, Idaho, native struggled in her early life with an eating disorder. However, she would overcome it with becoming involved and falling in love with fitness. This determination would lead her to achieve her placing 3rd in her first fitness competition. She would then later win Miss Galaxy 1998.
Wilson would then conquer the world of Sports entertainment. The first perception of wrestling would be when she first attended a WCW event with her boyfriend in 1999. She then would be approached to walk out with Scott Steiner to the ring. Kevin Nash then proposed to have a storyline with Torrie. Torrie made her debut as Samantha on February 11, 1999. Wilson would be released from WCW on December 2000.
Torrie Wilson made her debut on June 28, 2001, on WWE’s SmackDown Live. Wilson did not have a huge amount of in-ring training. She did lack some in-ring experience. However, she always approached it with great confidence and an ability to be an acceptable heel for the Diva’s division.
At WrestleMania XXV she competed for Miss Wrestlemania Battle Royale. She was eliminated by Beth Phoenix. She would have to retire from in-ring competition in 2008 due to a back injury. Torrie Wilson, also attended the inaugural Women’s Royal Rumble match and also the first WWE all-female pay-per-view, WWE Evolution.
Wilson would comment on her feelings of first performing and the current women’s division with ESPN. “It’s kind of crazy, I would almost want to throw up a lot of times when I walked out — I wasn’t sure of myself just yet,” Wilson said. “And there is nothing like pushing yourself in front of millions of people to figure it out, right?”
About walking out to a packed auditorium in Australia, she remembers thinking, “Holy crap, this is a lot of people.” Her mom would watch her on TV and say to her, “Wow, where is my [shy] daughter! This is not my daughter.”
“It’s actually mind-boggling to me when I watch their matches,” Wilson said. “I remember watching Becky Lynch and then asking her after, ‘How are you going on? How are you doing matches after matches? Aren’t you hurting?’ And she is just tough as a nail.”
Torrie Wilson, the Diva, the Heel, the Model, the Fitness Competitor, but mostly a Wrestler in a sports entertainment world, will find her place into the WWE Hall of Fame, on Saturday, April 6, 2019, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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Pics courtesy of WWE