BROOKLYN, N.Y. — What does it mean to be a strong woman? Do you need a championship title? A movement behind you? A main-event position at WrestleMania? Those certainly help, but if you ask Torrie Wilson, those are the spoils, not the qualifications, of a powerful female in complete control of her “inner bada**”. As Stacy Keibler said in her surprise appearance as Torrie’s inductor, “The All-American Girl” is the poster child for working to make yourself, and the world, a better place. And as Torrie herself admitted in her charming, candid speech, even if her wrestling skills didn’t occasionally fit the bill of a Hall of Famer, she worked hard to “[maintain] the courage to keep coming back for more, even if I wasn’t the best.” Who could be more deserving than that?
Wilson’s speech was a lesson in self-improvement, as she took the WWE Universe from an embarrassing grade-school interaction with her fourth-grade boyfriend to the unlikely Superstar who motivated herself to the Hall of Fame with three simple rules. Rule No. 1: “Realize that permission is for pansies. We don’t need anyone’s permission to be who they are.” Rule No. 2: “Gotta forget the failure. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t hired based on my wrestling skills. I had none.” And Rule No. 3: “Summon your swagger. Even if your swagger is dorky as hell, your swagger is the first thing that people see.”
There was a series of thank you’s to the people who helped push Torrie to be her best self — Fit Finlay, Billy Kidman, Victoria, Michelle McCool, Candice Michelle, just to name a few — a word for her late, beloved father Al, the WWE Universe who always says it like it is, and even her old classmate for motivating her to find her confidence, The All-American Girl swaggered her way into the WWE Hall of Fame. Her work to make the world a better place continues. But her speech left WWE at least, a little bit better than it had been just moments before.
Article source: WWE.com