Raquel Rodriguez admits there was a stretch when she believed WWE had her filed away as a tag team wrestler and nothing more. The reigning Women’s Intercontinental Champion discussed that fear, and how a blunt critique from Kevin Nash changed the way she works, during a sit-down with Chris Van Vliet at Insight LIVE in New Orleans.
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“It meant so much. I’ve had a very long journey with WWE. I’ve had so many ups and downs, so many nos, so many yeses,” Rodriguez said of winning the title. “And then for a moment there, I thought I was just getting pigeonholed into just being a tag wrestler. But to know that they have faith in me to carry a title, to know that they have faith in me to stand here as your Intercontinental Champion, that means so much to me.”
The worry had a basis. Rodriguez has held the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship more times than anyone, but before she beat Sol Ruca on the July 27 episode of Raw in Inglewood, California, her only singles gold had come in NXT in 2021. Ruca has since faced backstage doubts about her main roster run, while Rodriguez walked out with the first singles title of her main roster career.
She did it bleeding. Rodriguez was busted open early, and the referee repeatedly wiped her face mid-match before Judgment Day stablemates Liv Morgan and Roxanne Perez helped set up the Tejana Bomb finish.
“As soon as I felt the blood dripping down my face, I was like, ‘Yes, let’s have more,’” she said. “Every chance that the ref could, she was coming up and just taking a napkin to my face and made it a little bit messier when it dried up at the end, but still epic. I couldn’t have asked for better.”
Working Tall Like Big Sexy
Nash called out Rodriguez on his Kliq This podcast in 2025, saying “my Diesel-mate needs to work tall” and complaining that she “always works down” against smaller opponents. She took the criticism to heart at the time, and she told Van Vliet it still drives her approach.
“Definitely when the Kevin Nash comments came out, those really hit for me. They made me want to work in the bigger presence,” Rodriguez said. “It shouldn’t be that easy for them, and it’s not that easy for them. We got to make them work for it. You got to work to get Big Sexy down to the mat.”
That approach applies to IYO SKY, who stood across the ring from Rodriguez in Monday’s six-woman tag win on Raw in Brooklyn. “Iyo Sky has a big character, big energy, but very small little packaging. So that’s why you can just slam her, and catching her is so easy,” she said. “Honestly, it feels like I’m just catching like a bag of potatoes or a sack of flour.”
Done Being The Nice One
Rodriguez credited Dakota Kai, her partner for both NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship reigns, with helping her find the character. “She’s a sister, and she just really helped bring out the Raquel in me. That was a big turning point for me.”
She also said being agreeable cost her early on. “Whether it was the beginning parts of my career with WWE where maybe being too nice was not a good thing and it wasn’t being helpful towards my career and my trajectory in this business,” Rodriguez said. “So I just really learned: no, it’s okay. You don’t always have to be too nice. You can actually say what you mean and say what you feel.”
