We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zondra Lee. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zondra below.

Zondra , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I learned professional wrestling the same way how anyone would learn something. I went to a school. I then pursued learning more after being taught the basics. However getting there was not as easy as I had thought it out to be.

Getting out of my head was my biggest obstacle. I went into training as a very shy, awkward, fifteen year old teenager who wanted to pursue her dream. I have never been an outgoing person. I prefer being by myself and I don’t go out of my way to interact with people. So, I’m sure you can imagine the immense fear I had in learning how to wrestle. That being said I’ve been told I am an extremely stubborn person, and I was not going to let my own insecurities and self doubt stop me from doing what I loved. When I tell people about those struggles and my shyness they don’t believe me by the way I am when I’m inside that ring.

Being at the point I am now with my career and looking back on my start of training there are things that I would have liked to have done differently if I had known better. One of them being the ability to be easier on myself when I didn’t get something right away. Yes, you should have a standard for yourself but you need to know that things also take time. Another one would be to be more trusting of the people who were working with me, knowing that we’re all working for the same thing. We are all there to help one another along the way. Also, regarding my struggle with shyness, if I could go back in time I would just tell myself, “It’s not as serious as you think it is, just get out there and do your thing.”

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was first introduced to wrestling by my father. I would watch over his shoulder as he would be making dinner while watching wrestling on his phone. I wasn’t a huge fan at that point but when I was about ten or eleven I started watching this promotion from the states called Chikara Pro and I fell in love with it. I had decided at twelve years old that I wanted to be a professional wrestler and I immediately started looking into schools. I wanted to start immediately. I was all over the idea of it. I had reached out to Dann Jarris a local promoter( who would later become my coach) at one of his wrestling shows. I was thirteen at the time. Now at that age of course it would almost be impossible to find someone to start training you. However Dann didn’t tell me no, he just said he was thinking of starting a school but wasn’t positive yet and that it was “never too soon to dream.” Two years later I was in the first class of his school ( NRGY Pro Wrestling Academy). After three month of training I had my first match at the age of fifteen.

Growing up in a small town in Northern Ontario, Canada I never really knew where wrestling would take me or how far I could go with it. As of right now I’ve been blessed with so many opportunities to have wrestled throughout provinces and on into two states, all by the age of eighteen.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

What really makes me the proudest and gives me the most rewarding feeling is seeing or hearing the effect I can have on people. From little kids to older seniors, for me especially it’s the little girls who warm my heart. Having them come up to you all excited and grinning, tell you how cool you are and how they want to be like you? That’s the best feeling in the world, and one I’ll never get tired of. Having little girls give me their drawings they made of me, or bracelets, or even a piece of paper with my name that they wrote out themselves. It really is an eye opener that we can have an impact on kids, and I love every second I get experiencing that effect

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There’s a lot of instances were you have to show resilience in wrestling. Whether that be in showing up again and again when people just want to see you fail, or pushing through injuries. I have had many cases with both of those situations, especially with injuries. The first real injury I had was only a sprained ankle but that had caused me a lot of anxiety and fear of not being able to perform correctly. The cause of the sprain was just a fluke accident were I land wrong, but I didn’t know it was that bad. I kept pushing through the match until eventually I couldn’t stand anymore. I continued to push through to finish the match, even though I couldn’t put any weight on my ankle. Looking back it was a really irrational choice, and I should have stopped the match and saved myself from wrecking my ankle further. That wasn’t the case though and I wouldn’t let myself quit, I had to push through that match. I was a mess afterwards and was in tears, not because I was in pain but because I knew I had to be in Alberta in two weeks to wrestle. I thought I had broken my ankle. I had it x-rayed and it was just a really bad sprain which I had irritated more with continuing the match. But I was set on going to Alberta so I taped it up, slapped a brace on and wrestled the two nights in Alberta, flew back home and finally rested and healed. I wrestled with a brace on for a very long time before I had full range of motion.

I was at the start of my career. I was sixteen and I was just so hungry and passionate about doing what I wanted. I’m still just as hungry and passionate but just a little more mindful of my limitations and what I put my body through. I’ll keep pushing no matter what.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @zondralee_wrestling
• Facebook: Zondra Lee

Image Credits

Matt Lishman
Robin Potter
Mariah Lirette