Nita Strauss Says Triple H And Stephanie McMahon Produced Her At WWE Evolution, Not Vince McMahon
As anyone involved in wrestling would tell you, the opening of a show is sometimes the most important part of the entire event. It's the job of that opening performance, whether it be a match or otherwise, to get the crowd excited and then it's the show, itself, that needs to maintain the buzz throughout.
At WWE Evolution, the task of getting the crowd going fell on the shoulders of Nita Strauss and Lzzy Hale. The two musicians opened the historic pay-per-view with a performance and Strauss joined our WINCLY podcast where she talked about the tone she and Lzzy wanted to set.
"Lzzy and I talked about it with Triple H and Stephanie and they just said, 'Look, we want you to get the crowd hyped up. We want you to start this event off strong and get them going from the get-go to let them know it's going to be rowdy, it's going to be high-energy, it's going to be loud.' And that's what we did," said Strauss.
"Lzzy and I went in there with the intention of warming the crowd up for the matches and I think we got there."
This was a unique guitar performance for Strauss as she wasn't on stage alongside Lzzy. Instead she was in the middle of the ring, which was a first for her. Strauss talked about the direction she got from backstage and if Vince McMahon had any input on her performance.
"Not at Evolution," Strauss said of McMahon giving her input. "I did at 'Mania [where she performed Shinsuke Nakamura's entrance theme]. Mr. McMahon gave me some notes and performance ideas when we were rehearsing for 'Mania. But at Evolution it was all Triple H and Stephanie.
"It was just the two of them and Triple H had a lot of input, a lot of suggestions and ideas. Walking ideas ? 'Hey, when you do this, why don't you go here? When you do this, come up to the ropes. When you do this, it's going to look great on camera.'
"So that was really helpful because, you know, I had never even stepped foot in a wrestling ring before. To do it for the first time there with a guitar in my hands opening up an incredibly important show, it was amazing to have his input on how it would look best on camera."
Nita Strauss will release her debut album Controlled Chaos on November 16th. The album is currently available on pre-order on her website as well as Amazon, iTunes and Google Play.
Wrestling Inc's full interview with Strauss will be released on next Thursday's episode of the WINCLY. A clip, featuring Strauss' above comments, can be heard in the latest episode which was released this morning: