Jennifer Decker On Alberto Del Rio Returning To MMA Competition, Who Injured Her During WWE Tryout
Jennifer Decker will be involved in many sports projects over the coming months including hosting AEW's Double or Nothing weigh-in in Las Vegas. The former model, who has hosted several sports shows in the past, also works for the Combates Americas MMA promotion and talked more about it with Wrestling Inc.
"It's a fight promotion that has a lot of Mexican and Latino American fighters? It has some of the best female fighters in the world," said Decker. "I'm just so proud to be not only working for a company that gives women this platform, but I get to work alongside Alberto Del Rio which is fun since I haven't worked with him since I was briefly with NXT."
Decker will be broadcasting tonight's Combate Americas event, Combate Americas: Reinas, on DAZN while Alberto Del Rio will be working the event on Univision. If you ask 10 different people about their opinions on Del Rio, you are likely to get 10 different responses. But Decker says he has been nothing but cordial to her.
"He's been nothing but cool to me. I'm sure there's mixed reviews about anyone you meet on the internet," Decker said before revealing that Del Rio is looking to revive his MMA career. "Alberto Del Rio will be coming out of retirement as an MMA fighter. So, they are still looking to announce who he is gonna be fighting. But, everything I'm hearing ? it's a no-miss fight. You have to see this fight."
Decker also said that she was honored to be able to host the Double or Nothing weigh-in. Many question the importance of a wrestling weigh-in, but Decker says it's just to build up the event.
"The point of the weigh-in is that it's all part of the hype machine," Decker said before comparing it to Combates America. "I don't know if Cody's implemented any rules around it, but it would be interesting to see if he does."
Decker mentioned that she had her own run brief sting with pro wrestling with a WWE tryout that came in 2012. She talked about how that came about and why things didn't work out in the end.
"It was the end of 2012 and they put out this casting call for new divas. Any little girl who grew up watching pro wrestling wanted to be a diva," stated Decker. "You wanted to be Trish Stratus or Lita. I didn't want to be one of the pretty girls having the underwear matches. I wanted to be one of the bad asses jumping off the top rope."
Decker said she had just overcome health issues at the time and was proud to make it through auditions. She went through camp in Los Angeles that was run by Bill DeMott and got to work with many of the women who are currently Superstars in WWE today.
"It was me, Eva Marie, CJ [Lana] and JoJo. So it was really cool that I got to work with a lot of the girls that made it to the top of the food chain," stated Decker.
Decker's in-ring career pretty much began and ended during that NXT tryout thanks to Eva Marie who broke Decker's neck.
"I got put through a broken neck! I think I was Natalie Eva Marie's first botch. I got injured two-and-a-half weeks into camp and never got to finish," said Decker.
Despite trying out, WWE looked at her as more of an announcer and backstage commentator than an in-ring performer. As part of the commentator tryout, she got to meet Jim Ross who has mentored her ever since and they'll be working together in AEW.
As for injuries taking her out of the ring, Decker said she was always willing, but her body just wasn't able.
"I had a concussion and stress fracture in my neck and they were just like, 'You're done,'" Decker said before noting how hard it is to sit and watch from the sidelines.
"I have the heart of Muhammad Ali as a fighter, but I have the body of a 98-year-old woman. I'm just made out of graham crackers. At least my neck is."
Jennifer Decker will be hosting AEW's Double or Nothing Weigh-In and Press Conference. It will take place as part of Starrcast II and will be streamed live via Fite.tv.
Decker's full interview with Wrestling Inc was included in a recent episode of our WINCLY podcast. The full audio can be found in the embedded player at the bottom of this post. In the full interview Decker discusses Alberto Del Rio returning to MMA, her time training in NXT, going to college with Lana, how she became the host for AEW's Double or Nothing weigh-in, the contrasting environments of AEW and WWE, why she's not a fan of the XFL re-launch and more.
You can check out past episodes of the WINCLY here.
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