Nyla Rose shares her reaction to Oklahoma warning AEW after she wrestled there

When she joined AEW in 2019, Nyla Rose was the first openly transgender wrestler to sign with a major wrestling company. She made further history a year later when she became their Women’s World champion.

For the majority of her run (aside from sadly unsurprising hate from some fans and pundits, which Nyla handled with grace and humor), there were no major issues. Then in April, news hit that the Oklahoma Athletic Commission had issued a warning to AEW about a match Rose had against Alejandra Quintanilla, a cisgender woman, at a Ring of Honor taping in the state last December.

Rose reacted to the situation when news hit (with the aforementioned grace and humor) and used it to raise money for Freedom Oklahoma, a non-profit that advocates for the Native American 2SLGBTQ+ community in Oklahoma. Now, she’s sharing her more personal reaction to learning about the Commission’s warning.

She did so on AEW’s Close Up with Renee Paquette:

“Where do we even start with that? It’s such a crazy, crazy situation. It definitely caught me blindsided. I had no idea any of that was going on… Several weeks after we had been there but kudos to our company and to our team who was like the ozone layer, up there protecting me and I guess us from it but I had no idea that was even going on. They’re like, ‘Hey, something’s coming out. You should be aware of this.’ Right before (it came out is when I found out), only because it was gonna hit the news-news but our team was up there defending and protecting is what I’m saying and then it was like, ‘Hey, okay, listen, we gotta rope you in. This is what’s been going on, this is what we’ve been dealing with.’“

In typical Nyla fashion, she joked about the support hurting her ability to play the villain:

“I was frustrated because it forced me to turn baby. I had some very evil plans on the table and everybody was so nice and loving and accepting and supportive that I had no choice. I had no choice so the evil cloak has been put away for a while. I owe you guys because you were so good to me.”

Rose wrestled Kris Statlander on last week’s Dynamite, losing in the first round of this year’s Women’s Owen Hart Foundation Cup Tournament.

H/t: Post Wrestling