Led by Angelina Love, The Allure has had a successful run in Ring of Honor. Backed by Mandy Leon and, initially, Velvet Sky, the group has been a featured part of the ROH women’s division since its debut at G1 Supercard in 2019. Despite this remarkable run, due to the presence of Love and, at first, Sky, The Allure has struggled to escape the shadow of The Beautiful People, a legendary TNA/IMPACT Wrestling stable Love and Rayne remain associated with to this day.
During a recent appearance on the Wrestling Perspective Podcast, Love looked back on the origins of The Allure before she explained how she hoped to differentiate it from The Beautiful People. First, she described how ROH brought her and Rayne in to work with Leon, who had been injured at the time.
“That had been something that had been rumbling for a while,” said Love. “Because Mandy was out with a knee injury, and they were looking for something for her to be involved with to come back. And Bubba [Ray] was already at Ring of Honor, and me and [Velvet] were obviously free agents at the time. So it was like a Bubba, Hunter, everybody kind of figuring it out. [Velvet] and Bubba face-timed me, and this was three weeks before we made our debut at Madison Square Garden, which was badass, basically saying like Ring of Honor’s gonna hire us and we’re gonna make our debut at Madison Square Garden, blah blah blah. So that was really cool.”
Love then contrasted The Allure and The Beautiful People; she explained that any comparisons to the latter are natural because she has played that character for several years now. She also stated that whereas The Beautiful People was similar to the antagonists in “Mean Girls”, The Allure was patterned after “badass women.”
“And then me and Bubba [Ray] and Velvet and Mandy, so it was like a big group text with Bubba and the three of us just figuring out The Allure thing,” said Love. “And we knew it was immediately gonna be looked at as a [Beautiful People] type thing, and that’s just my character, period. You know, like I’m a god-awful babyface, like worst, like I have to, in my mind, be like cheesy Hulk Hogan just to get through being a babyface. Heel is so natural to me. But the way that we try to describe in how we try to work the difference between the Beautiful People and The Allure was, the way I always described the Beautiful People was like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in ‘The Simple Life’ meets ‘Mean Girls’ movie.
“To me, it was more ‘Mean Girl’ thing, high school bully kind of thing, whereas with The Allure, we were more like whips and chains, denim, leather, we wanted it to be more like badass women,” said Love. ” So not so much like mean bitchy girls but more like badass women is kind of how we were trying to have that difference so it’s not like the Beautiful People 3.0. So that’s kind of what we’re going for….”
Catch The Allure on this week’s episode of ROH Women’s Division Wednesday, when they challenge The Hex for the NWA World Women’s Tag Team Championship. The show airs every Wednesday at 7 p.m. EST on the company’s YouTube channel.
RELATED: Angelina Love: I’m Not Ready To Retire, But I Eventually Want To Transition Into A Backstage Role
The full interview is available here:
