Raquel Rodriguez Shares Feelings About WWE Changing Her Ring Name
WWE’s Raquel Rodriguez has addressed the recent alteration to her ring name. The female star was one of many wrestlers to have their names changed recently, with Vince McMahon reported to have sent a memo in which he asked for certain names to be revisited.
According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, the WWE chairman has made it clear he does not want performers who are signed to the promotion to use their real names nor the names they used while wrestling for other companies.
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"The actual story behind this is all the talent got a memo and Vince McMahon decreed he doesn’t want anyone new using their real names anymore, nor names they’ve used before on the indie scene,” Meltzer wrote last week.
“Walter became Gunther because Walter was both his real name and a name he used on the independent scene. Raquel Gonzalez kept Raquel (not her real name) but had to drop Gonzalez (her real name). Many thought Austin Theory dropped the Austin because of Steve Austin, but it’s actually because his real name is Austin White.”
Rodriguez had previously performed under the name Raquel Gonzalez, having gone through a successful spell at NXT. However, her name was changed once she was promoted to the main roster and debuted on SmackDown earlier this month.
Raquel Had “No Arguments”
The 31-year-old spoke to Cageside Seats in a recent interview and claimed to have no issues with the name change, which she says is actually cool as her initials are now R.R, the same as Rhea Ripley’s.
“They just basically said, ‘Hey, you’re getting a name change and this is it.’ I was like, ‘Cool, that’s fine.’ I really had no big arguments with it at all,” she said.
“It was just a simple little switch. It’s funny, I was just joking with Rhea (Ripley) last Friday because she was actually at SmackDown, and her initials are R-R, Rhea Ripley, and we’ve always joked about being a tag team, and we had our feud NXT. Well, now my initials are R-R, Raquel Rodriguez. So it kind of just feels like it was meant to be, so I’m okay with it. We’re starting to think of new tag names.”
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