WWE’s Becky Lynch Says Her Mom Came Around to Her Wrestling Dreams: ‘She Saw It Really Tamed Me’ (Exclusive)

The trailblazing pro wrestler spoke with PEOPLE ahead of her debut memoir's release this week

Becky Lynch has done it all in WWE.

The Irish-American professional wrestler, whose birth name is Rebecca Quin, has won six world championships and in 2019 became the first woman to headline the company’s marquee WrestleMania event alongside Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey – a match she won, of course.

But before she was wrestling in front of tens of thousands of fans every week on WWE television, Lynch often found herself trying to convince her strict mother that the arduous life of a pro wrestler was the life for her.

“I had a very realistic goal-driven mother who had no time for dreams,” Lynch, 37, tells PEOPLE ahead of the release of her debut memoir, The Man, out Tuesday.

“She was seeing me lose the runt of myself when I was a teenager,” Lynch explains. “I was all over the place and I was uncontrollable, and then all the sudden I’m like, ‘I want to wrestle!’ and she’s like, ‘What?! No!’ She was very confused and didn't know how to manage it because I was so unconventional and wild in her eyes.”

But once a teenage Lynch began booking wrestling gigs around the world – first in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and then Japan before ultimately catching WWE’s attention in 2013 – Anne Quin began noticing her once unpredictable daughter was finally staying out of trouble.

“She saw it really tamed me,” Lynch says. “It stopped me from going out drinking and doing the things that I shouldn't be doing, and she saw that I was better at school and I was more focused and trying to be healthy. None of the things that I was doing was normal. But once I kind of got into it and she saw the discipline and the application that I was putting into wrestling and everything else, she started to back off a little bit. As a mother now, I can’t imagine. I’d be worried. I’m already worried about everything.”

Lynch’s relationship with her mother and the WWE star’s own experience becoming a mother in 2020 provide the emotional bedrock of her debut book, which goes on to give a first-hand look at how Lynch helped revolutionize women’s professional wrestling and become one of the most successful WWE stars of all time.

The idea for a memoir first hit Lynch during the pandemic, when she began to take stock of journal entries she’s made every day since a young age, inspired by her late father Ken’s penchant for reading and writing.

The notes helped Lynch retrace her career, from first falling in love with pro wrestling when her older brother Richy Quin started watching it on television, to following him to a local gym to train, to booking her first matches and eventually finding herself in main event matches at Japan’s legendary Korakuen Hall.

“My ‘me time’ has always been wrestling,” Lynch says. “That's my creative outlet.”

Her memoir also gives more insight into her seven-year hiatus from wrestling after suffering an eye injury in a 2006 match. Lynch writes that the injury gave her an excuse to take a break from wrestling as she struggled to find her place in the business, walking away from the job her mom once reviled and briefly following in her footsteps by becoming a flight attendant.

Lynch writes that she led a “passionless life” during that time, dreading the sound of her alarm clock, small talk with coworkers and the pursuit to follow her mother’s advice to “live a normal life.” The “wandering years,” as Lynch labels them in the book, eventually come to an end when her grandmother’s death inspires her to chase her dreams once more. Her return to the ring would ultimately lead her to a WWE tryout.

The rest is wrestling history. Lynch went on to win championships at every level in WWE, helping lead the charge to redefine an era for women’s wrestling. Her efforts effectively altered how female performers were embraced by fans and wrestling promoters worldwide.

While she racked up championship after championship in the ring, Lynch also met her husband, fellow WWE star Seth Rollins, whose real name is Colby Lopez.

The couple married in 2021 after the birth of their daughter Roux, who will now grow up watching women wrestle with the same opportunities and levels as men, thanks in part to her mother's decision to continue pursuing the wrestling dream that her grandmother once didn't understand.

“I've achieved everything and more that I set out to do,” says Lynch, who seems calm as ever heading into her Women’s World Championship match at WrestleMania on April 6 against Rhea Ripley - the latest in a career full of high-profile, championship matches. “But life continues to surprise me."

Lynch, who still writes at least three pages in her journal each day, continues to reflect: “It's not a sad thing that I've done everything interesting either, it's a good thing. Because once you've done that, then you're free to realize that none of those things change anything and you just come back to the love of it – the love of storytelling, the love of being out there, the creativity and everything you put into it. You stop asking, what can I get from this? And you start asking, what can I give to this? And that’s an amazing place to be.”

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