You might have read that WWE Superstar Becky Lynch brought her new autobiography to the White House earlier this month when she was invited as part of a St. Patrick’s Day event. What you might not know is that she left her book in a White House library next to Dumas Malone’s biography “Jefferson and His Time” and “The Life & Times of William Howard Taft” by Henry F. Pringle.
Lynch’s one regret? She forgot to leave an autographed copy.
“That was a miss by me,” said Lynch, whose given name is Rebecca Quin. “But it is in the library. Or, at least it was a couple of weeks ago.”
Lynch’s book, “Becky Lynch: The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl,” debuted Tuesday, and it set up the most chaotic press run of her professional wrestling career, just in time for WWE’s biggest show of the year, the 40th edition of WrestleMania. She and Rhea Ripley will be one of the showcase matches for the two-day WrestleMania XL next week from Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.
Lynch was a guest on my “Sports Media with Richard Deitsch” podcast, where we discussed her process of writing, storytelling and other subjects. Below is a condensed version of that interview. Some of the content has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.
I was struck by how much you revealed in the book when it comes to your relationship with your husband (Colby Lopez, who performs in WWE under the name Seth “Freakin” Rollins). A writer always has to make a decision how deep to go. How did you decide on what to share when it came to the things that mean the most to you?
Lynch: I love our relationship, so I loved writing about it. I loved all the little quirks and the false starts and the “will we, won’t we?” It’s such an exciting part of a relationship. The beginning. Those butterflies. Did he touch my hand? Did he mean to do that? I wanted to put that in there and show all that. They are my favorite parts of the book because, I mean, my favorite part of my life is my relationship with my husband.
We have such a great relationship, and it was such an interesting, fun start. I committed to writing a book that I wanted people to read, and if you’re going to do that, then you can’t be wasting people’s time or your own time. I feel like if you’re going to do this, do it right. Be honest. Get it out there and make it as entertaining and interesting and honest as possible so that people might take something from it. It’s a biography, and a biography should be honest. I wasn’t writing fiction. I’m not writing a novel here.
It seems like a tricky thing to write a book in which you reveal a lot about your vulnerability and self-doubt, which is very much a counter to your in-ring character. How was the writing process when it came to revealing things that totally counter what most people know of you publicly?
Lynch: I think it comes down to several things. One, I always wanted to write a book. My dad always encouraged me to write. As a fan of Mick Foley, he wrote a fantastic book, so I wanted to write a book. I always imagined the stories that would go into a book. But when I actually came to writing the book, I think more than anything else, I just had to be honest. Reading a book is an undertaking, right? You have to take time out of your day. I wanted to give them something that was real and something that I was going through.
You did a writing course for this, right?
Lynch: I did a writing course for a year. I learned a lot about writing. There’s always the fear that you are going to expose yourself, but the fear is good, you know? I think if you can be honest, it’s harder to criticize somebody for their genuine feelings because, well, that’s how I feel. You can’t tell me that it’s wrong because that’s how I felt. I wanted to show what it was like in my mind, going through all of these things and the doubts and the anxieties and the fears, but overcoming them all. The interesting thing I think about me — and I think that a lot of people can relate to this — is I have this weird juxtaposition of unshakable self-belief and just crippling self-doubt at the same time. It’s a weird thing.
Some of it comes into wrestling. I said it in a promo a few weeks ago: When people believe in me, I’m good, but when people doubt me, I am great. That is genuinely how I feel. Sometimes it takes me a second when I doubt myself, and I’ll sit and wallow in it for a second, and then there’s, like, this rage against the machine — even if I happen to be the machine. Going through that roller coaster of emotions is very human, and I wanted to write about my own human experience.
You have a busy life. A career. A daughter. A husband in the wrestling business. But you’ve got to find time to write. When did you write this book?
Lynch: I’m not a crack-of-dawn kind of person. In this house, we don’t do the crack of dawn. My daughter doesn’t do it, thank God. We always laugh at those success videos that say you have to get up at 4 a.m. I was borrowing time, stealing time whenever I could get it. (When) my parents were over, we would go to a kids museum with my daughter, and I had my laptop. I would write anywhere I could — on planes, backstage at live events. But it was so important that I also have my family life. When (my daughter) goes to bed, I love those few hours where it’s just me and Colby and we get that time to ourselves. I feel like I very much snuck a book in.
Most authors worry about how the closest to them will react to what they wrote. Did you show what you were writing to Colby or your brother, or the important people in your life prior to whenever it was close to the finished product?
Lynch: My brother read a much earlier draft, and he liked it. But that’s not even close to what it became. Colby read it in a matter of days, and said he loved it. He was the person I was most scared to show it to. When he liked it and gave me his feedback, that meant the world to me. He’s never lied to me, so if he was going to lie to me, this would have been the first time … but I don’t think he did.
How did you determine what you would write when it came to people in wrestling?
Lynch: I think with certain people like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Fergal (Devitt, who wrestles as Finn Bálor), they’re all easy because they’re such close friends. They’ve been such an important part of my life. Charlotte Flair has also been such an important part of my life, but we’ve had the fallings-out. I think what was important to me was to make sure that I told it from, as much as possible, being able to see her side of things as opposed to just telling my side. When you’re writing about other people, they don’t get the chance to defend themselves. You need to be fair in that.
I wanted to be able to see her side of it. I wanted to show the realness of the relationship, because between our ups and downs, there is always love, especially on my end. When you feel hurt, do you feel hurt more because you love a person? I think that’s ultimately what it is. I tried to show that, and hopefully I did show that and didn’t paint her in a bad light because I don’t think that’s fair to do in a book.
Vince McMahon is part of this book given his impact on your career. He placed you in a main event role, and he and Stephanie McMahon were big supporters of your career. The book was done prior to the allegations (of sex trafficking, physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and negligence) that came out about Vince. How do you navigate the current allegations against Vince with the person you wrote about in the book?
Lynch: They’re horrendous allegations. They’re horrendous, and it’s so hard to to listen to and reconcile because you don’t know that person. The person that I’ve experienced was like a granddad — at times, a very grumpy granddad and one that you’re frustrated with, but one that was so supportive of me and my family and of my career, encouraging and understanding, and also very responsible for the dream that I have. The fact that there is a WWE and for them allowing me to live my dream, for meeting my husband, for my whole family, everything that I have … and then you hear these allegations. It’s hard to connect the two. In many ways, they just feel like two different people. Trying to see them as one person, I don’t know, it’s very hard. It’s very difficult to reconcile.
It’s somebody who was so close to you and has given you so much … and then, you’re a woman in this business, a woman who is so driven for change and so forward and so ambitious in that. You want everybody to have the experience that you have, and when they don’t, it’s heartbreaking. It’s difficult and not anything that you want to hear about. It’s just very hard when it’s somebody that’s so close to you or has been so close to you.
You recently became a U.S. citizen. Why was that important for you?
Lynch: I’ve always just had this yearning to be in America. I felt like anything was possible if I could get over there and I could follow my dreams and all those kind of clichés about the American dream. But I think more now than anything, I have an American daughter, I have an American husband, and my family is American. It’s time for me to be part of that family. Not just my immediate family but the communal family. I had to have my green card for five years, and when that happened, I applied right away.
Are you excited about doing a book tour versus what is a traditional wrestling press junket for WrestleMania?
Lynch: Yeah, I am. I’ve gotten to do the tours as Becky Lynch, but this is my first tour as Rebecca Quin. That’s exciting. I’ve put so much work into this and put my heart and soul into writing this book. Of course they’re coming out to see Becky Lynch, but I feel like they are also coming to see Rebecca Quin, and that feels very real and surreal to me.
(Photo: Alex Bierens de Haan / Getty Images)
