Nikki Cross has discussed which WWE Hall Of Famer she has been studying tapes of after spending three months away from the WWE ring.
Cross made her return on Raw on the 24th of May in her first outing on the red brand after losing to former tag team partner Alexa Bliss on the 1st of February. Since her return, Cross has been in fine form as she has holds victories over Raw Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley and Charlotte Flair after lasting two minutes with each woman in Beat The Clock Challenges.
On the 7th of June episode of Raw, Nikki Cross teamed with Asuka and defeated Flair and Ripley in a tag team match after the two women that met at WrestleMania 36 struggled to co-exist.
The Scottish superstar recently spoke to Stephanie Chase of Digital Spy about her time away from the ring in recent months. According to Cross, she spent a lot of time studying matches including those of one exciting WWE Hall Of Famer.
Cross explained:
“So the last few months I’ve been training in-ring as much as I can. I’ve been training four times a week, just doing everything I can to be the best competitor that I can be, working on different things, and just introducing new moves to the move set. I’ve been studying as much tape as I can, watching a lot of matches. I’ve been watching a lot of Ricky Steamboat, a big favorite of mine.”
“Or even watching older matches of my own just to say, ‘Okay, what can I do better? What can I maybe change, what I can improve on?’ Or to be like, ‘Let me keep that, that’s a great little move that that takes people off your feet. It’s been such an amazing period of growth for me as a performer and as a competitor and as a person and just really just throwing myself in and being immersed in a wrestling ring again.”
Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat was the perennial wrestling hero in the NWA, WCW, and the WWE in the late eighties and early nineties. He embarked on a trio of legendary matches against Ric Flair in 1989 that are still discussed to this day. Latterly Steamboat was part of a team of wrestling legends that faced Chris Jericho at WrestleMania 25 – fifteen years after his last match. Steamboat was still hugely impressive and his outing led to a one-on-one match with Jericho at the WWE’s next pay-per-view, Backlash.