For years, Rachel Ley spent time honing her craft as a gymnast, which later earned her a spot on the Rutgers University Gymnastics Team. Nowadays, she is in the early stages of another athletic venture, professional wrestling.
To further hone her wrestling skills, Ley recently moved to Florida to train at Flatbacks under Shawn Spears and Tyler Breeze. During an interview with WrestleZone’s Ella Jay, she revealed which other wrestlers have emerged as her personal study material.
“I’ve been watching a lot of New Japan in the 90s just because a lot of that stuff hasn’t been used recently,” Ley said. “I can definitely recycle and revamp it. As far as modern day wrestling, I tend to watch most of the high-fliers, men and females. Will Ospreay with AEW. You have Ricochet. You have Sol Ruca, Tiffany [Stratton], Kelani Jordan, a few others.
“Just seeing what they do, okay how can I make it different? Everyone does a moonsault, but am I going to jump up each rope like Tiffany? No. That’s disrespectful and I’m not at that level. In my mind, that’s disrespectful. I have a moonsault, but I also have a moonsault where I do a tuck kick out. Nobody else does that. I haven’t done it in a show yet, but maybe eventually at some point I will.”
Ley Has A Tiffany Stratton-Inspired Cartwheel Slam
Taking inspiration from WWE’s Tiffany Stratton, a fellow gymnast-turned-wrestler, Ley has adopted a cartwheel slam into her moveset, but with her own twist, a side slam. Stratton recently took notice of it on TikTok.
“I work a lot of extra events, so I work Raw on SmackDown. I get to be like a medical standby. I’ve been used once and I got to get in the ring with Rey Mysterio. But if they don’t need you, then you usually just sit in Gorilla, so obviously the talent is passing by. People I would assume know my face by now. They don’t know who I am, but I’ve gotten to a point where like I can smile at Tiffany and be like, ‘Hi’ and she said hi back,” Ley said. “So with that being said, I posted the TikTok and I tagged her and was like, ‘Hey, saw your move, wanted to make a little twist on it, let me know what you think of it.’ Then she responded and said, ‘OMG, love it,’ so that was pretty cool.”
@rae_ley alabama slams are risky expecially in the indies with people you don’t train with and @Tiffany Stratton owns that move so we tweak and the next thing you know, she’s “getting ley’d” #prowrestling #aew #aew #wrestling #viral ♬ som original – Aesthetic Beats
While it gained Stratton’s approval, Ley admits that her iteration is still a work in progress as she may opt to tweak the execution of the move in the future.
“I didn’t want to do the Alabama Slam [like Stratton] because one, in the indies, nobody takes those,” Ley continued. “Two, I understand like that takes a lot of trust from someone that you’ve never worked before. I get it. I think we might turn it into a different type of move because what I was doing wasn’t really dynamic enough.”
Watch our full interview with Rachel Ley below:
