IYO SKY reveals last-minute ring name change before WWE debut

WWE star IYO SKY said she entered professional wrestling with almost no knowledge of the sport, made a humbling in‑ring debut at age 16 that nearly drove her to quit, and only adopted her current ring name days before a major main‑roster debut, she told host Chris Van Vliet on the Insight podcast this week. Speaking from a long career that began in 2007 and now includes multiple WWE and NXT championships, SKY traced how early uncertainty and later reinvention shaped her rise.

SKY recounted that her sister invited her into wrestling and that she had not even watched matches before training. "My debut match was awful. Everything was so bad I cannot explain," she said on the podcast, recalling a three‑month training period and a debut in front of roughly 30 people. The experience left her embarrassed and ready to quit, she said, but also motivated her to improve and prove doubters wrong.

That determination paid off in Japan and later in WWE. SKY rose through the Japanese circuit and NXT, where she won the NXT Women’s and NXT Women’s Tag Team championships, before joining the WWE main roster in 2022. She described the transition to the main roster as abrupt: while recovering from a...