Thunder Rosa is one of the best women’s professional wrestlers in the world, but the journey to get to the top of the mountain is one that is never ending.Rosa, whose real name is Melissa Cervantes, currently performs for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) – two of the major promotions in North America.But while most professional wrestlers started their path to the ring at a school, Rosa was a social worker before wrestling caught her eye."I became a pro wrestler 13 years ago after making a decision to stop being an activist.
I was a social worker, so, one day, I decided that I wanted to be a wrestler after going to a wrestling show and just attending a couple of the shows there and feeling that was the next step to take," she told Fox News Digital in a recent interview."I feel like the call was like – it was going to be a bigger platform.
I just decided to go and do a tryout and after I did the tryout, I fell in love with professional wrestling."COMPLETE PRO WRESTLING COVERAGE ON FOX NEWS DIGITALThunder Rosa battles Deonna Purrazzo during AEW Collision on June 15, 2024, at the Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio.(Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)Rosa said the aura of pro wrestling is what got her hooked on it in the first place.
Everything from the theatrics to the sport.She said she was up for the challenge even though she never much played sports in her life."It's everything.It's all the details, all the different things that the sport entails, which is, you know, the theatricals, the level athletic of athleticism," she said.
"It's just like the fact that you could travel with it and also because it's very challenging.It was going to be very challenging for me physically because I never done like sports and I just felt like I could do it at the time."Rosa said she had to start from scratch, "learning how to roll, learning how to exercise, learning how to build my body, learning like body control, a lot of li...