WOW’s Razor Describes Her Journey From Wrestling Fan To Wrestler (Who’s Still A Fan)

AXS TV

Razor made her first appearance on the most recent episode of AXS TV‘s WOW Women of Wrestling with an ominous promo. She later appeared at ringside to support Fury, her associate in the Psycho Sisters, a goth-punk girl gang straight out of an ’80s movie, and get involved with her match with EDM-personified wrestler Chantilly Chella. So far WOW viewers have only briefly seen Razor in action, but independent wrestling fans might already be familiar with her work various promotions as Sarah Wolfe, manager to Tyler Bateman, or know her as one of the hosts of the Women Wrestling Friends Podcast.

With Spandex talked to Razor about her lifelong wrestling fandom, the WOW training school, and more. The conversation is below and has been edited for length and clarity.

With Spandex: Let’s talk about first how you got involved with WOW.

Razor: As a little girl watching wrestling I always felt like I wasn’t big enough to be a wrestler and I wasn’t cute enough to be the kind of wrestler I was seeing on TV a lot more as I got older. It was women who had to look a certain way, basically like models. And as I got older, hit puberty, I was like, “Oh, well, I am neither tall nor hot, so I can’t really do this.” And so I kind of gave up on the dream for a while. And eventually, as an adult, it kind of dawned on me one day, when have I ever let anything stop me from something that I wanted to do I never have, whether it’s my size or whatever.

So I googled it, I looked into it, and more than anything, what I found myself wishing was, “I wish GLOW was still around,” because that was the kind of wrestler that I want to be. I want to be full of character. I want to be full of life. I want to be someone who’s more than just, “Oh, she can do a moonsault, cool.” And so I eventually found out that WOW existed and it was like my dream come true. And then to try out and get into my dream – it’s basically been a year of dreams for me. It’s pretty awesome.

How was the transition from just being a fan to becoming a working wrestler

I didn’t have as much trouble with it as I know some people did. Some people feel like they lose their love of wrestling when they make that transition, because don’t get me wrong, everyone who wrestles was a fan of wrestling at some point. It’s how you become a wrestler, and you don’t make it as a wrestler if that’s not how you feel.

And it can be hard to continue to be a fan once you know too much, right Once you see behind the curtain, once you’re analyzing everything, right Do basketball players like watching basketball as much Probably not because they are kind of forced to watch it a lot, right So it’s a similar thing where I’m very nitpicky now when I watch, I’m criticizing things when I watch. “Oh, I would have done this, I would have done that.” So that’s been kind of the hardest hurdle, but I found that generally I am able to separate the fan part of myself from the working part of myself and to be able to sit and enjoy a match, and I think I’m better at it than a lot of other people.

So you follow women’s wrestling very closely for your – do you want to plug your show

Sure, so my podcast is called Women Wrestling Friends. WWFP, hahaha, see what I did there And on Women Wrestling Friends Podcast, we don’t just talk about women’s wrestling, but we are all women who talk about wrestling.

— Wrestling Friends (@WomenWrestlingF) November 23, 2018

One of my reasons for starting it was I kept seeing people acting like those women who liked wrestling were unicorns. We’re so rare! We’re so unique! Um, y’all must not pay attention. Because if you go back and you watch from the ’40s, ’50s, from the ’80s, from the ’90s, you can watch wrestling in these different decades, right Look in the crowds. There are women in the front row every decade that you go back, in every show.

Even when women’s wrestling was at its lowest point, there were women in the crowd because women have always been wrestling fans, and we kind of get ignored. A lot of the merch isn’t geared towards us. Even some women wrestlers don’t have women’s merch. It’s kind of a crazy thing that we’ve always been here and we’ve been so ignored.

So my podcast seeks to talk to women fans and kind of show how normal we are and just how diverse we are. I mean, that’s the other thing I really love about the podcast is not through any sort of thing, I didn’t go out and look for diversity amongst women, but we’ve had trans women, we’ve had Asian women, black women, white women, people of all different sexualities and creeds and sizes. There’s no type of woman who likes wrestling, you know what I mean And that’s my favorite thing to shed a light on.

So WOW’s going to be the only televised women’s wrestling show in America. How do you think women will connect with the show

Actually, it goes perfectly with what I just said about my podcast, because we are not all hot supermodels and one or two big monster women. We literally represent almost any kind of woman you can imagine is on this show. We’ve got from bad girls to good girls, big girls to small girls, you know, just every type of girl you can imagine who wants to fight, you can watch this show and you can find yourself. There’s a character for you.

If you’re the sporty one, if you’re the happy go lucky dance one, if you’re a dark goth girl, there’s literally, as a fan, there’s someone you can connect with no matter what, and that’s really exciting to all of us, you know, at the end of the day, women wrestlers love wrestling, and to know that little girls are going to grow up having something we didn’t have, they’re going to grow up able to see themselves as heroes on television. That’s really meaningful to us because we didn’t really get to have that.

Yeah, I definitely felt that going to the tapings. Like, this is so not what they had on TV when I was a kid. Do you have a favorite match you’ve had for WOW so far

I guess it would have to be my match with Faith [the Lioness]…. That question doesn’t really have an answer. I’ve only had one match.

— WOW_Razor (@razor_wow) January 27, 2019

There are some new wrestlers who maybe people who follow a lot of women’s wrestling probably won’t know about on WOW. Are there any newer faces who you think people should watch out for on the show

Actually, my opponent, Faith. I really do think you should check her out. She had what is essentially three months of wrestling training. And I say that to you because when you watch her wrestle, you’re going to think I’m a liar. She’s a naturally gifted athlete, and that’s why I looked at her and said, “That’s who I want to face.” Because anybody knows you’ve got to take down the strongest member of the pack to become the leader. She’s one to look out for.

There are quite a few girls who people won’t be familiar with who came up through WOW and I think it’s a testament to WOW’s training that it would be pretty hard for you to look at the wrestling and tell who came through WOW and who came through other places because there is a really strong training regimen, and much more intense than I think a lot of people think we have.

What’s the WOW training experience like

I’ve trained at a few places. I’ve trained in New Japan’s LA Dojo, I’ve trained at Santino Bros, I’ve trained at seminars for Shimmer, and I would say that WOW had the most intense physical aspect of the training. So there’s a lot of things that people might be familiar with if they’ve watched like the WWE tryout videos… There are specific exercises that help wrestlers, and they are intense, they are hard, they’re not easy.

It’s not like “Oh, do a little bit of running and do some jumping jacks and do some squats.” It’s throw your body this way, now throw your body this way, now stand up really quickly after your body’s been on the ground. So just a lot of really, really intense, I guess what would be HIIT cardio in a way, mixed with strength training, and usually that was for about an hour, and then the rest of the training would be actually having matches or learning moves, things like that.

And could you describe your WOW character

So Razor, she’s from the streets. She never really had anybody looking out for her growing up. You know, other kids could get rides to after-school practice or, you know, if there’s something they really wanted, as long as they got good grades, they could get it. Razor didn’t get any of that. Anything Razor wanted in life, Razor had to go out and get herself with her own two hands, and that really influenced who Razor became and who she grew up to be. And now currently in WOW she is the leader of a gang called the Psycho Sisters. And her main goal is mostly mayhem, but also along the way in that mayhem, she’s looking for the number one prize, the WOW Championship belt. And usually whatever Razor wants, Razor goes out and gets.