AEW Star Thunder Rosa Discusses Finding Her Identity As A Wrestler

While Thunder Rosa carries herself as a performer who has been around wrestling for decades, it's easy to forget that the former AEW Women's World Champion got into the business relatively late at 28 years old, after spending many years working as a social worker. As Rosa prepares to celebrate her 10th anniversary as a wrestler later this year, she's been retracing her steps from growing up in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico to now living in San Antonio, Texas, and finding herself as a person and a performer along the way.

Rosa's search for identity was a pivotal topic when she sat down with "Heal Squad," discussing her desire since childhood to live in America and receive the same opportunities as family members who had left Mexico for the US. Rosa also revealed that, for a long time, she had attempted to distance herself from her Mexican heritage or the lucha libre wrestling style, believing that she needed to be seen as a wrestler, not a luchadora. That all changed, however, when Rosa began working in Japan.

"I was so against my background," Rosa said. "I did not want to be seen as the Mexican wrestler. I wanted to be seen as a wrestler. I wanted to be seen as a woman. And it was like, in my process of running away from who I really was, I ended up finding myself. And this was happening in Japan, which is like me being okay with being Hispanic, being okay that my roots are lucha libre, that I don't know any lucha libre. But going to Japan, that was going to get me closer to my roots. And that's where I started learning how to do lucha libre, in Japan."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Heal Squad" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription