Summer Rae’s Lingerie Football League Stint Prepared Her for WWE Spotlight
October 22, 2015 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
When Summer Rae first stepped onto the WWE stage, the flash of cameras didn’t blind her. The crack of two human beings colliding was a familiar, likely comforting, sound at that point.
Playing cornerback in the Lingerie Football League served as a prep course for the WWE Diva. She went from collecting bruises on a football field to doing so in a wrestling ring, moving from one circus to the next.
In 2008, the LFL (now the Legends Football League) was a fledgling operation looking to carve out a niche in the sports market. The 7-on-7 version of football that celebrated skin as much as it did violence evolved from the Lingerie Bowl that had long aired during Super Bowl halftime.
Summer was still Danielle Moinet back then.
She had yet to wrestle her first match, to slap Rusev in the mouth in front of a live audience or to dance alongside Fandango. Still, she was laying the foundation for her WWE career as a defensive back for the Chicago Bliss.
For years, WWE‘s slogan for its Divas has been “smart, sexy and powerful.” There is a shift underway to focus more on wrestling than sex appeal, but the women’s division is clearly still trying to sell itself as both a source for eye candy and for sports entertainment.
The LFL approaches things with a similar mindset.
The hits are hard. The shorts are tight. The game is a display of athleticism and toughness, but the promotion of that game is built around attractive women wearing minimal clothing.
Moinet starred in a teaser for the league where she made eyes at the camera:
Being asked to be the center of attention and selling an athletic product with sultriness were warm-ups for WWE. She and her fellow Divas are often asked to pose for photo shoots like this one. They walk the red carpet at promotional events; they appear on local television to hype WWE shows.
Before she would strap on her helmet and go to work on the gridiron, Moinet had to play spokesperson for the LFL, as well.
In 2009, she went on Chicago Tribune Live to tell viewers what to expect from the league. With a high-voltage smile, she had to sit through questions from interviewers who seem to be struggling not to start giggling.
She not only had to promote the game, but also sell folks on the validity of that game. That’s a key skill for a wrestler as that industry is often dismissed, often snickered at.
The LFL, too, is in an endless battle for respectability. The fact that its athletes compete in lingerie opens it up for misconceptions, for audiences to underestimate how physical things get on the field.
And Moinet was clearly comfortable with getting physical.
As Ryan Smith wrote for Red Eye (via the Chicago Tribune), Moinet laid out a running back during a scrimmage in 2009, leaving the ball carrier clutching her knee in pain. She sounded thrilled to have been part of that violence.
She told Red Eye, “I’m excited to hit and get all my aggression out.” In the aforementioned Chicago Tribune Live interview, Moinet talked about how much she loved hitting and going after the quarterback.
It takes aggression like that to make it in WWE.
Moinet now finds herself dishing out heel kicks and DDTs rather than tackles. Playing football without padding below the shoulders prepared her for that life. She was surely accustomed to aching knees and ice packs pressed to her back long before she took her first bump.
And the LFL‘s embrace of attitude aided her, as well.
The league isn’t shy about pointing the camera at its loudest, most confident players. Trash-talking and swagger, much like one sees in WWE each week, is commonplace.
That was on display in a recap of a Chicago Bliss vs. San Diego Seduction game. Players talked about killing the other team, about making them cry.
Moinet got in on the act after her team’s victory. “3-0, baby. See you in Vegas,” she said to the camera with a natural confidence.
In one interview, a tinge of wrestling promo permeated her answers. Moinet told NBC Chicago, “We’ve had some minor injuries—a lot of collarbone breaking, a lot of torn ligaments, nothing too extreme yet, but only because the Chicago Bliss hasn’t started playing yet.”
With that kind of swagger, it’s not surprising that she eventually found her way onto the WWE roster.
That’s a place she had her eye on even when she was deflecting passes for the Bliss. In an interview with Bleacher Report’s Joe Burgett, Moinet called herself “a huge WWE fan” and said, ”The Divas are not only gorgeous but extremely athletic. Why wouldn’t I wanna be a part of that?”
Now she is.
A storyline as Rusev‘s love interest made her more prominent than she has ever been with the company. That came to an abrupt end, though, when the powerhouse’s real-life engagement overshadowed his storyline one.
Depending on how one looks at it, she’s now either in limbo or freed from an anchor of a storyline. Either way, she has yet to fully translate the promise she showed in the LFL and at NXT into full-blown WWE success.
Summer hasn’t looked as good in the ring as she did at NXT. She hasn’t connected with the crowd the way that Sasha Banks or Paige has. The foundation for a career in the squared circle is there, though: charisma, athleticism, personality, a spark that gets one noticed.
She showed off all of that as part of the LFL—a star in shoulder pads, a Diva in training.
