Thunder Rosa and Britt Baker certainly made history on St. Patrick’s Day, 2021. They had a Lights Out Match that was very reminiscent of anything Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie were capable of back in the day. They certainly broke a wall down…a wall of limitations…limitations that they broke through in AEW and AEW alone.
Yes, there are hardcore matches in the indies, but in AEW they were able to show that women wrestlers in a top promotion were willing to push the boundaries, and do the unexpected in a match that people are still talking about to this day. We also put the match in our Singles Matches of the Year…a list we composed a week or so ago.
Well, Thunder Rosa decided to share her thoughts on and about that fateful day in a recent interview with Renee Paquette on Oral Sessions. Here’s what she had to say:
“There’s a lot of stuff that I had never done before. So there’s a lot of like, you question yourself and you question ‘can I do this? Can I do this safely? When we go live, am I going to be nervous? Is my opponent going to be nervous?’ …
I call my husband. I remember I was in the back, and I was in tears telling my husband, ‘I am very nervous about this. I don’t know if I’m going to pull it off.’ He was like, ‘just remember who you are; where you’ve been and all the things that you have gone through…
Just remember that you are fu**ing Thunder Rosa. You are there for a reason; they brought you here for a reason. This is your moment. Remember that.’ And I remember getting ready and everything, and Tony was like, ‘you’re going to do great. I trust you, I believe in you.’ Tony always tells me that he believes in me…
By the end of the match, everyone is on their feet clapping. And I was shaking…There’s a moment, literally we break the table, she’s completely full of blood; I’m full of her blood. And I’m telling her, ‘I belong here! I belong here!’ Then they raised my hand and I’m in tears. These are some real fu**ing tears…
In my mind, I remember thinking ‘f**k you guys! I knew this was going to be good, but I didn’t think it was going to be this good. And I didn’t think I was going to survive.’ It was just so good. Tony hugged me and was like ‘hey champ, I knew you were going to do this. Thank you so much.’ …”
via Oral Sessions /Wrestling Inc (Transcription – link below)
She sure had an impact on the fans, but in the same interview, she also shined a light on the impact she made to her peers in the locker room. She said:
“And then he was like ‘now you got to cut a promo.’ And I was like ‘oh f**k!’ I made a couple of people cry. Ogogo, I made him cry. He was in the process with me, we became very good friends and he was training me and stuff…
And Sonny Kiss, I remember he hugged me and he looked at me and said ‘I remember when you and I were in Lucha Underground and how much you struggled to get respect with the people in Lucha Underground because you were so new. And look at you right now, doing a main event of this magnitude. You’re going to become a legend.’ …
(W)hat we did out there was going to bring women’s wrestling to another level. I learned a lot from Britt, honestly, in terms of the moments and doing stuff like that. I think a lot of people won’t give her credit on that…She’s very smart about certain things, and the stuff that she picked, it was really, really good…
But I think if I had been a sh**ty worker and not sold her s**t and that stuff, I don’t think it would’ve been as good. I’ve seen a lot of street matches, I’ve seen a lot of Lights Out, death matches, and some of them don’t have that emotional connection that we had on that match.”
via Oral Sessions /Wrestling Inc (Transcription)
And take women’s wrestling to another level it most certainly did. Female wrestlers have been having hardcore matches for years, and the work that Piper Niven (now Doudrop in WWE) did in the indies proves just that, but the Lights Out Match on St. Patrick’s Day, 2021, will go down in history as revolutionizing the women’s divisions across the board.
Just look at the influence drawn by Deonna Purrazzo and Mickie James in their Texas Death Match at Hard To Kill (2022) for Impact Wrestling. There were definitely shades of the Lights Out Match between Rosa and Baker in that one. And even within their own company (AEW), women have been inspired to take matches further and push the boundaries of female wrestling. Just look at the Street Fight between Tay Conti and Anna Jay vs. Penelope Ford and The Bunny at New Years Smash/Rampage! Enough said.
Hats off to both women, and hats off again for how professional both women were, as Rosa’s comments undoubtedly prove. In closing, the women’s division over at AEW is most definitely a force that’s gaining momentum bit by bit, and if I were WWE, I’d start thinking about having members of their own roster push a few boundaries (as Doudrop/Piper Niven and others most certainly can) in the match department as well, because the women of AEW and Impact are starting to take the cake, if you ask this writer.
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