Becky Lynch talks life in a WWE family, why 'it's more fun to be the bad guy'

Colleen Hoover and Stephen King have sold millions of books, but neither has ever used one of their tomes as a weapon in a pro wrestling match. In that regard, BeckyLynch is already breaking new ground in book publicity.

“I was like, 'Let me just sneak one under the ring for safekeeping and also maybe I could use it for things like paper cuts but also just standard bashing,'” says the WWE star born Rebecca Quin about busting out a copy of her new memoir “Becky Lynch: The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl” (in stores now) last week during a “last woman standing” match on “Monday Night Raw.” (For the record, she walloped opponent Nia Jax with her book – the hardcover edition, natch – as well as a kendo stick and a fire extinguisher.)

The biography chronicles her journey from growing up in Dublin, Ireland, a wrestling-loving dreamer to signing up with WWE in 2013 to ultimately main-eventing WrestleMania. She also offers a no-holds-barred introduction to the business for new fans, with tales of in-ring friends and foes as well as her big loves – these days, that’s husband/co-worker Colby Lopez (aka WWE world heavyweight champion Seth Rollins) and their 3-year-old daughter, Roux.

“I just tried to be honest with myself,” Quin says, adding author to her resume alongside wrestler, actor and former flight attendant. “You have to really reflect and go, ‘When were you lying to yourself?’ Because there's lots of times in life that we lie to ourselves but we don't realize until afterward."

Quin begins a book tour this week, recently hung out with President Joe Biden and soon wrestles Rhea Ripley for the women’s world championship at WrestleMania XL (April 6-7). She talks with USA TODAY a couple of days after her "Raw" appearance about the new memoir and her wrestling life. 

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Question: What was the writing process like for “The Man”? 

Rebecca Quin: I really just stole time from things. Like if my daughter wanted to watch “Toy Story,” I would be sitting there writing. I didn't have any process where it was like, “Let me get up at 9 a.m. and seal myself off.” It was like, where can I write? And it didn't matter what kind of distractions were going on. I would be backstage at live events, just writing. Oftentimes I kind of liked that a little bit more. It was the white noise of everything and maybe I'd hear something that would spark some inspiration.

Congratulations are in order since you officially became an American citizen last week. You write about first visiting here as a kid with your mom, but has that been something you’ve wanted for a while?

Yeah, absolutely. I've always looked at America as, it's such a cliche but, look, the land of opportunity, and it's gifted me that. And more than anything, it's given me my family: I have an American daughter and I have an American husband. So I wanted to be part of that immediate American family and then the communal American family.

You’re 48 hours removed from your book-bashing brawl, where you won after jumping off a ladder and leg-dropping a woman through a table. Are you still sore at this point or have the butt callouses built up really nice over the years?

You definitely become calloused as a wrestler. After having my daughter and coming back, I remember hitting the ropes for the first time in a year or whatever it was, and my body just felt like it was going to crumple into dust, which thankfully it did not. But after having that match, oh yeah, I'm sore. My daughter wants to play and she has all these games. She loves to play Scar and Mufasa. I brought her to Broadway to see “The Lion King” on stage and she constantly wants to reenact when Scar goes, “Long live the king” and throws him off. I'm Mufasa and I have to fall off the bed, and I'm just like, “Oh, my neck, my back.” It hurts but you just get on with it.

What does Roux think of what her mom and dad do for a living?

She's confused by it. Her dad had a boo-boo, and she's like, “Where'd you get that boo-boo?” And he's like, “I got it working. He pushed me and I fell over.” And she was like, “Does everybody get boo-boos working?” And it's like, “No, see, some people work in an office, some people work on a computer,” so she doesn't understand that all working isn't fighting. I think she's getting worried. He brought her on TV for an entrance shot, and she was like, “Are people going to hurt me?” “No, no, no, baby, no!” Trying to get her to understand that is difficult at 3.

Your character’s currently a heroic babyface but you’ve worked before as a villainous heel, and even been a heel who, thanks to fans, becomes a mega-babyface. What’s your favorite to do?

It's more fun to be the bad guy. You can do no wrong. If people hate you, good, that's your job. If people love you, well, I'm just so good at my job that they love me. (Laughs) It's a lot easier. I remember seeing this meme back in like 2017, the 10 hardest jobs in the world in no particular order. It was a deep sea fisherman and all these just chaotic jobs, and then it was like a WWE babyface. It is quite difficult especially when you go from underdog to being top dog, because people resonate with the journey and the scrappiness.

You write in the book about the backstage meta idiosyncrasies of pro wrestling, including avoiding story lines with Colby. So you’re likely to not get involved now when he and Dwayne Johnson are having a war of words?

No, probably not. And what's a tricky part is me and the Rock are friends. Whenever (Lopez) has feuds, for the most part to add to them, I will often echo his sentiment. In a marriage, obviously you’ve got to be a team. You’ve got to be on on the same side of things. And I always am, he's always No. 1 to me. Then it becomes complicated when it's against people that you have your own friendships and bonds with. But in terms of just our characters, I think our heel characters probably would've meshed a bit better than necessarily the babyface ones.