We had a chance to speak with Heather Monroe after the last Baja Stars USA show. For those who don’t know of Heather yet, she just came off wrestling on a world wide tour as part of the Puscifer tour. In this interview she talks about getting into wrestling, training at Santinos, her tour with Puscifer, Lita, her plan to avoid being flipped by anyone’s dick at FCW, and much much more.
Steve: I’m here with Heather Monroe after a Baja Stars show. Thank you for your time.
Heather Monroe: My pleasure.
Steve: So, let’s start at the beginning. How did you first get into wrestling?
Heather Monroe: I watched it when I was young and would trampoline wrestle as most would, so I came to LA when I was 22 and did the acting thing for a bit. I was finally like “you know what, I’m just going to do my first passion” which was pro-wrestling. So I went to Santinos [Santino Bros wrestling school] and signed up.
Steve: How did you first learn of Santinos?
Heather Monroe: I went online and found a couple schools and Santinos felt like a family and I saw that a lot of good wrestlers had come out of there so I went with them.
Steve: Did you follow indy wrestling at all before you started training? How did you know of some of the wrestlers who came out of there?
Heather Monroe: I followed indy wrestling a lot when I was in college. When I was younger I really only did the WWE thing but in college I started following stuff like Shimmer. Women’s wrestling is almost strictly what I watched. I was watching these powerful women wrestling and was like “I want to do that.”
Steve: How did you learn about promotions like Shimmer? Being with a website that primarily covers indy wrestling I’m always interested in how people find it. Not a lot of people make that jump from WWE to indy wrestling.
Heather Monroe: I’d pretty much read the dirt sheets and I’d see sections where they’d mention people like Lacey and Sara del Rey and I wanted to find out more. I’d read stuff like Diva Dirt. Then I’d see videos and would see really good matches that made me want to check more into it.
Steve: Before you started training at Santinos did you go to any indy wrestling shows or did you only know it from videos?
Heather Monroe: I just watched the videos.
Steve: How long did you train at Santinos before your first match?
Heather Monroe: I trained for a little less than a year before my debut. I got picked for the [Puscifer] tour before my debut, but it was about a year before my SoCal debut.
Steve: Did you have any matches prior to going on the Puscifer tour?
Heather Monroe: One. I had my debut match with Guy Cool against the Studdy Buddies. Guy Cool was the only other person to make it out of my class with me, so we got to team together which was really nice, and it was against the Study Buddies so it was fun.
Steve: So as far as the Puscifer tour goes, that is a huge deal. You got to wrestle all over the United States and Europe. How did you get selected for that? Was there a tryout?
Heather Monroe: Yeah, they had the tryouts at Santinos. They [Pusicifer] contacted the Poubelle Twins through Lucha VaVoom, and I’m not sure if they just needed to use or dojo, but Jezabel put everything together and got people to audition. So I auditioned and got it.
Steve: On the shows did you guys wrestle a lucha style or was it more of hybrid?
Heather Monroe: It was a hybrid style. They gave us all the freedom. They told us whatever we want to do, do. They just gave us the story. It was American lucha.
Steve: I know there was a story to the matches. We had an article up kind of detailing the story. Were the actual matches the same every night or did you guys do different stuff?
Heather Monroe: We had a main match, that was like a 30 minute match in the beginning, and we would do that match pretty much the same every night. Then there would be matches between their songs so the musicians could get a break, and those would change every night.
Steve: And you guys went throughout Europe on the tour as well.
Heather Monroe: Yeah.
Steve: Was that your first time in Europe?
Heather Monroe: No, I went with a school trip. This was like “here’s some freedom and it’s on someone else’s dime, so have at it.”
Steve: Yeah, it really seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity, there’s so many wrestlers who would kill for something like that.
Heather Monroe: We were wrestling like five nights a week so you get the idea of what it would be like to be in WWE or a company that tours, it was a great experience. For me who had just debuted, I got so much confidence from being in the ring constantly and with my trainers.
Steve: Yeah, even having only the one match before the tour, I’m sure you now have more matches then some people who have been wrestling for several years. Especially in women’s wrestling where it seems so much harder to get matches.
Heather Monroe: Yeah, we were five nights a week and two days off and it really helped me become more aware of myself as a wrestler and how to work with other people and how to work crowds that aren’t necessarily wrestling crowds. That was a good experience too because you learn what matters and what doesn’t matter. Sometimes you think something matters, but it really doesn’t.
Steve: Let me go back a little bit, when I first started getting into indy wrestling there were hardly any women wrestlers at all, outside of whoever they had in the WWE doing bra and panties matches.
Heather Monroe: [Laughs] Which is how I got into wrestling which is kind of weird. That is what was happening when I started watching.
Steve: Yeah, but now it seems like there was an explosion of women wrestlers, and not only that but wrestlers who are actually having good matches. You can even look at WWE and they are wrestling and not doing whatever they were doing before. What was it that drew you into it?
Heather Monroe: Lita. Lita was the main thing. I mean she did the bra and panties matches, but she was just a bad ass. She would hit the guys and go with them. I got in post Chyna, when I started Chyna was already gone, so Lita was my main inspiration. Then when I got back into it in college and started watching indy stuff it hurt my heart to watch the girls because I wanted to do it so bad. Watching really good workers in Shimmer and stuff.
Steve: That’s actually my theory that Lita is what lead to all of this.
Heather Monroe: She is the Rey Misterio Jr. of the women’s generation.
Steve: Right. At one point locally there was Cheerleader Melissa, Sara del Rey, and Erica Porter, and if one of those three weren’t in the women’s match you knew it was going to be bad. That’s if there was a women’s match. It was like finding Bigfoot. I stopped following for awhile and when I got back into it, the difference was like night and day.
Heather Monroe: When I was watching WWE there was Lita, Ivory, Trish Stratus, Molly Holly, Victoria, these women that wanted to be taken seriously even though they had to do bra and panties matches or whatever. They were still going to go all out no matter what they were stuck with. It’s weird that I would get excited for the bra and panties matches but I didn’t think about them as bra and panties matches, I was happy to see my favorite wrestlers.
Steve: Tonight you wrestled here at Baja Stars against three primarily lucha wrestlers in Cristal, Lady Lee, and La Golosa. I know at Puscifer you wrestled sort of a hybrid style, but it was with people you were familiar with. How was it working against these three, who I’ll assume you’d never worked with before?
Heather Monroe: I was really lucky to have some people here that were able to translate for me. I don’t know if everyone has that luxury. The entire match was called in Spanish, which is obviously normal for a lucha match. So I had the translator help me and then when it was time I just had to go for it. It was easy to work with everybody and I got to do some stuff that I have been working on and show everyone because this was my first real match back since doing the tour. I was glad to kind of showcase what I can do.
Steve: Training at Santinos, do you get to do a lot of training with Los Luchas?
Heather Monroe: Yeah. They are awesome and I try to train with them whenever I can.
Steve: Do you prefer lucha style or more of an American style?
Heather Monroe: I like integrating the two. I like doing Americanized lucha. I have a dancer background so I like to be able to incorporate some of that stuff. It’s a very political answer I know, but it’s true.
Steve: Now, coming up next week you have the two huge FCW shows. First you’re going to be wrestling with Laura James against Douglas James and Joey Ryan. What are your thoughts going into that match?
Heather Monroe: I am going to avoid dicks. [Laughs] That’s my plan. My main goal is not to get flipped by anybody’s dick. I’m really excited about this match. Laura was on the Puscifer tour with me and we got really close. She is awesome. I know that me and her are going to be an awesome team. We have some shenanigans lined up and everything. I’m pretty excited to be able to wrestle at FCW as it’s an awesome show to be on.
Steve: Last time Joey Ryan and Laura James had a match together at FCW, there was a proposal. Are you worried about anything going on like that?
Heather Monroe: [Laughs] No. No repeats.
Steve: Then the next time you and Laura James are teaming against Thunder Rosa and Holidead.
Heather Monroe: I’m really excited because those girls are pretty no nonsense when it comes to doing everything. To get to go up against a couple of girls that I think have the same mentality that I have will be pretty exciting.
Steve: What kind of goals do you have as far as wrestling goes? Do you see yourself in the WWE some day? Shimmer?
Heather Monroe: My ultimate goal is definitely the WWE. I would love to go to Shimmer too. I want to go to Shimmer above anything else right now because that was one of the main things I watched getting into wrestling and that made me so motivated to do this. Lucha Underground would also be awesome. It’s such a well put together show with so many talented people.
Steve: What about Japan?
Heather Monroe: That was never a thing that I paid much attention to. I would obviously take the opportunity if it came to me. It was never a goal for me, but it is something I’d love to do.
Steve: Before I let you go, is there anything that you’d like to plug?
Heather Monroe: heatherisme on Instagram. I have FCW coming up on the 22nd and 23rd. I will be on the Wrestling Guy podcast the Thursday before FCW [July 21st]. I’m doing Championship Wrestling from Hollywood on July 24th too. So I have a busy weekend. I’ll be in Arizona the week after that too. To keep up just go to my Facebook.
Steve: Thank you very much for your time and I’ll see you at FCW.
Heather Monroe: Thank you. I’m very excited for those matches!
