Anna Jay recently spoke with SEScoops correspondent Ella Jay about the state of AEW's women's division, who she sees as a locker room leader and her intense tag team Street Fight from the "New Year's Smash" edition of AEW Rampage.
All Elite Wrestling has been steadily growing its women's division. Through its evolution, the female competitors have been granted some gnarly opportunities, through the first ever Unsanctioned Lights Out Match, the TBS Championship Tournament and the bloody women's tag team war on New Year's eve.
Watch our full interview with "The Queenslayer" Anna Jay
Street Fight at New Year's Smash
Anna Jay and Tay Conti battled The Bunny and Penelope Ford in a tag team Street Fight on the final AEW broadcast of 2021. It was the culmination of a longstanding rivalry between the two teams.
The match was a violent affair and one of Anna Jay's toughest challenges to date. Despite the physical toll the match took on all four women, Anna Jay says she learned a lot from the match and enjoyed the hardcore brawl more than she expected to.
"That was a lot of fun," said Jay. "Definitely nothing like I've done before. So I think my biggest takeaway, too, is just even more believing in myself. I can do these things that other people can do, and I can do hardcore things which I never thought that I would do. And yeah, like I said, I had a lot of fun. I learned a lot and really enjoyed it more than I thought that I would have."
How does one prepare for a match that involves tables, ladders, chairs and thumb tacks?
"I think really the only preparation was just mentally just knowing what my body was going to endure, she continued. "And it's funny too, I don't know if I've said this before, but I actually had a super bad migraine that day before the match, and I did not feel good at all. So it was like hard for me to really focus on, like worrying about things, if that makes sense. So I it was kind of like a crazy day, but yeah, I would say just mentally, just knowing what I was about to do."
The AEW Women's Division
In honor of Women's History Month, Anna Jay also spoke on the AEW Women's Division. She feels the division has come a long way since the company was founded in 2019.
"I mean, it's definitely grown," she said. "We're doing great now. It's cool to say to that. We have more than one segment on Dynamite and Rampage and to grow our roster and just myself, even being able to do more and seeing everyone get better and want to do better has been a really cool thing too. So, yeah, I mean, it's been great and I think everyone in the locker room would say the same thing."
Women's Locker Room Leader
Anna Jay went on to also explain who she considers the locker room leader in the AEW Women's division:
"Honestly, Vickie Guerrero, that's a great one....She's willing to help anyone so that to start off with. She really helped out the locker room a lot. Like I said, offers to help with anything, helps us with the locker room itself, like our stuff, our gear, just pretty much anything we need. She's there. It's like a locker room mom, like a locker room leader. She's really the best."
Thanks again to Anna Jay for chatting with us! You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
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