Before she was WWE Superstar Becky Lynch, she was indie wrestler Rebecca Knox, and before that, she was just a regular Irish girl named Rebecca Quin. As with most great wrestlers, it’s extremely hard to tell where the person ends and the persona begins: Lynch feels like a crystallization of all Quin’s charisma, charm, and gumption. Her enthusiasm for performance — both combat and theatrical — is contagious, her love of wrestling undeniable. She arrived at Vulture Festival ready to chat about her autobiography, Becky Lynch: The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl, a conversation that spanned her early days on the indie circuit to her future plans in the ring. It was a rare chance to cozy up to one of the biggest names in sports entertainment, a true performer who doesn’t mind a bit of gossip so long as it keeps you watching.

What inspired you to go from wrestling to writing a book?
I always loved writing. My dad, as soon as I could write, was like, “Write everything down, keep a journal.” I was like, “Dad, I don’t have anything to write about.” “Write about the price of sweets. You’ll be amazed by the inflation.” I started writing down the price of sweets. And I am! I’m amazed by the price of inflation.

Anyway, my favorite wrestler was Mick Foley. He wrote a pretty good book. So it was always one of my goals. Then the pandemic hit. I was like, “Well, this is probably a good time to write a book.”

Mick Foley helped you a little bit with this project, did he not?
Yeah, he was amazing. He spent eight hours on the phone one day with me, just going through page by page. He was down to the details, like commas, and I was like, “I think I’ll have a copywriter for that, Mick. But go on.”

The book starts during your childhood in Dublin. What was expected of a girl growing up in Dublin back then?
I think the expectations of women in Ireland may have been different than they are over here. When I was growing up, the first president I remember was a woman, and the second president I remember was a woman. I grew up in a household where my mom was the predominant breadwinner, not necessarily by choice, but that’s how it was. I grew up in a very Catholic family, and I remember when they let you be altar girls. I was like, “Great, I won’t be bored during mass anymore.”

I kind of always felt like there’s no reason I wouldn’t be able to main-event WrestleMania — apart from my obvious shortcomings such as failing P.E., being a complete stoner and waster, but it wouldn’t be because of my gender.

You’re part of an industry that for a very long time had very strict kayfabe, where people kept their personal life secret. Today, that’s no longer as true. Do you like sharing yourself with an audience?
They didn’t have social media back then; I think that has a lot to answer for it. But the audience loves the gossip. I love gossip, too. You like to know what’s going on behind the curtain, but then you really want to believe, “Oh, yeah, no. But they really hate each other. They really do.” Because then when you hook them, there’s more gratification.

When wrestlers manage to get me to a place where I’m like, “I’m not sure if this is real or not,” it’s such a magical feeling.
Oh, but then it turns real. Because feelings get hurt. We’re all a little sensitive, aren’t we, in the entertainment industry. There’s a phrase in wrestling, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it: “Don’t work yourself into a shoot.” It’s all supposed to be work. It’s all collaborative. When somebody goes off book, and they say something that they shouldn’t — now, that’s money, you want to see them fight, because somebody might throw a real shot. That’s the fun thing about wrestling. Anything can happen.

At the start of your career, you were often the only girl around. Did it make you realize that your gender might be an issue?
I don’t think so yet, because I had that confidence of being the best. Not because I was the best, but because for the first three years of my training, I was the only girl in Ireland. But there’s a confidence that comes from being the best. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are. Sometimes, you have to lie to yourself to give yourself those circumstances.

When you first got hired by WWE, how was it different from the indie circuit you were used to?
It was a shark tank back then. In the indies, it was like this wacky wild circus. Everybody was happy to be there. Everybody was excited to work with one another. There was a little bit of that in WWE, but there was also a sign that said, “You’re not here to fill a spot. You’re here to take a spot.” It was very much about this competition. Then there were all these rules. Women couldn’t hit, you couldn’t punch, and you couldn’t do anything that looked violent. Every day, I was scared of getting fired.

You, Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Charlotte Flair became known by fans as the Four Horsewomen when you were all in NXT together. It would’ve been so great to have a real official Four Horsewomen faction; is that something you wish would’ve happened?
I think it was always on the table, bubbling under the surface. Then sometimes, when you let something go for too long, the magic’s gone. I could be wrong, but I think Vince McMahon never got it. He didn’t understand. But anyway, alas. Maybe, never say never.

What do you think makes a good heel in wrestling, and what makes a good baby face?
I suppose you have to know what your job is as a heel. Your job is to make everybody cheer the good guy, to make sure that people aren’t thinking that you are cool. On the other side, as a baby face, you need everyone to like you. That’s very difficult. Because we like assholes. But more than that, there’s so much freedom when you’re a bad guy, when you don’t care what anybody thinks. You’re free to be a lot more entertaining. It’s a lot easier to be a likable heel than a likable baby face who’s just fighting valiantly and always doing the right thing. What is a likable baby face? Somebody who’s vulnerable, honest, and genuine, somebody that you want to go for a pint with.

Is it difficult to maintain friendships in this industry because you’re always competing against each other?
Not always. No, I have some great friends. I suppose I’ve had that friendship with Kevin Owens and Rami Sebei, but we were never competing for the same spot. But Natalya I’ve known since I was 18 and we were on my first tour of Japan together. We text all the time, and I was talking to her earlier.

I wonder if you could talk about the struggle you had deciding to take your relationship with your now-husband Seth Rollins public?
Wrestling relationships can get messy. I’d never been in a relationship that hadn’t broken up, and neither had he. It’s one of those things, especially when you’re climbing to the top, and you don’t want anything to take the wheels off the car. We weren’t sure if we would come forward with it. Then if we came forward with it, then surely Vince would want us in a story line. He did, and it was bad.

You had to really fight for how you announced your pregnancy on RAW. In the book, you describe a scene where you’re sobbing as you argue with the creative team over what they originally wanted you to do, and eventually, you end up going right into Vince McMahon’s office to complain. Can you talk about that?
The whole thing was supposed to go down in this crazy way, where they wanted me coming out and challenging the backstage interviewer. Then Asuka would come out, and I would say all these just elaborate, robust words. It was bad. It was just very bad. But I was also very hormonal. I was ready to punch somebody. You got to know what hills to die on. When you’re early weeks of pregnancy, you don’t know those hills. You’ll die on all of them. I was ready to fight, and I fought. It was better than it was otherwise intended.

I know you’ve been asked about Vince McMahon a lot; is it frustrating for you to have this hanging over things?
No, I don’t think it’s frustrating. I had my experiences with Vince. They were all, for the most part — apart from him yelling at me at one point after WrestleMania — very good. He treated me very well and with a lot of respect. I know that that is not the experience everybody had. But also, there’s so much that you have going on in the world of wrestling. It’s hard to differentiate the person, all the things that they’ve done that we’re aware of, and who you’re interacting with at that moment. I suppose we’re all just interacting in the best way that we can in the moment, and then judging each other on the experiences that we have with them.

Did it affect how you wanted to talk about him in the book?
I had finished the book for the most part by the time he had stepped down. Then I was in the editing process. It would’ve been hard to navigate. Anyway, I just had to keep to my experiences.

What is the future of Becky Lynch?
I’m training for this half-marathon. I’ve been working on some other stuff I can’t really talk about. But if you think that the way I’m going to go out after the career that I’ve had is with Dominik Mysterio slamming a door in my face, that’s probably not going to happen. But when will that come back? I don’t know. I’ve really been enjoying myself and working on some projects that I’m very excited about. Whenever I get to share them with you, I think they’re pretty awesome.

You’ve talked about how you would be supportive if your daughter Roux wanted to be a wrestler. Would you ever want to do something like a custody-of-Roux match?
That’d be so good. I don’t know that people would buy it, but that would be awesome.

 The WWE superstar knows that letting fans peek behind the curtain can hook them even more.