AEW referee Aubrey Edwards recently appeared on The Sessions with Renee Paquette for an interview covering all things pro wrestling. During the discussion, Edwards was asked about fans talking about her trying to be a character in the ring instead of just being a referee:
“I think when it first started happening, it was obviously something that I’m just like, ‘Oh Twitter eventually is going to hate me because I’m a woman.’ So that’s going to just happen and I’m really good about not listening to criticism that doesn’t matter. I listen to constructive criticism. That’s sort of where I’ve been focused.”
“If Jericho is putting me in a match, and he’s shoving me, and then wants me to shove him back, I’m going to do it because it’s ultimately not my decision. It’s his decision because it’s his story and I’m there to help elevate the story that he’s telling. So, it’s not like I tried to be a character, it was just sort of like, they figured out that I have a very go-getter personality and very no-nonsense, and as people picked me in matches, they’re like, ‘Oh, well, if I shove her, I get a lot of heat for that, so let’s do that.’ Cool, great, and it just sort of happened naturally, but it was never something I intended. It was just something that happened because the wrestlers asked me to do things in matches, and I do them.”
She commented on her tryout with WWE:
“It was terrifying. So the way my tryouts were worked was it was like four separate times, I think a total of say, like 16 days. So I was brought out, and they told me up front, like we’re looking for more referees for the Mae Young classic. So I knew that was sort of the carrot that I was working towards. They brought me out in I think it was either June or July for a whole week. They just said, ‘We want to see you in a class structure. We want to see you working with the other reps. We want to give you the full referee experience.'”
“So they’d reached out to me partly because Jessika Carr, who’s a referee now on SmackDown. We knew each other from talking on Twitter or whatever. So she had given my name as another potential female referee. So I came in and that week DDP was at the Performance Center and they’re just like, we’re going to do yoga every day. I’m like, I am going to nail this because I’ve been doing yoga since I was 12. There was a push up contest at one point where you do a five count down, hold for five count, come back up, and if you fall or delay, you’re out. I was like, I got this, and the only people that beat me were Lacey Evans and Shayna Baszler. I was like, I did okay, I’m okay with this.”
“That was the same week that they were filming NXT. So I got to do a dark match before their TV tapings. Also, in between commercials and stuff, I got to run out and help talent after matches and whatnot. It was just a really cool experience to see the whole thing and what a day in the life of a referee was.”
“Then once I was done with that week, they messaged me and said, ‘We want to bring you in for Mae Young (Classic). It’s going to be a full week in August.’ So I go out and I’m just doing the same thing, like trying to just keep to myself, but be helpful where I can and they gave me a ton of matches. That was the first time I met Toni Storm and I think she had had like four matches that same day.”
regarding Tegan Knox getting injured in her NXT match, she said:
“I was in that match. I’m like, ‘Oh God. I don’t know what to do. How are we going to handle this?’ I’m just trying to focus on her, but at the same time, I don’t work here, so like, what do I need to do to make sure she’s as safe as possible. It was just a whirlwind of, oh, God, this is crazy. I think how I handled that situation had an impact on the other times that I got brought in. I got brought in for a coconut loop. You do the three Florida shows on a weekend where you’re driving around like Dade City and a couple others. So I did that. I got to do a couple tag matches. They had me do the North American Championship at one point, which was wild. Then they brought me in for the pay-per-view and I got to do the battle royal, which was super dope.”
If she will be the referee for the MJF-Bryan Danielson match at Revolution:
“That’ll be Bryce Remsburg and I know that he’s been spending some time on the StairMaster building up the cardio.”
Aubrey also talked about being in attendance the night Daniel Bryan retired on RAW:
“They close with the promo. It’s a super emotional thing. So I’m literally crying in the front row and I paid good money for those tickets. I’m just like, Oh, God. At one point, I see this camera come up to me, and I’m like, ‘Oh, no. Oh, no, this is happening.’ You see the red light goes on. This is when the floods were starting to happen, so they’re about to catch this shit, and I just start crying. So there’s this GIF of me just crying, which is why reffing Bryan’s matches now is so insane, especially I did his one in Seattle, that was like, literally, I sat there, saw your ass retire, and I’m in the ring with you.”
You can listen to the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
