Samantha Allen aka, Nina Samuels is an English professional wrestler and superstar. She is a key player in World Wrestling Entertainment and best known for performing on the NXT UK brand under the ring name Nina Samuels. Nina has won numerous championships, and is an all-round powerhouse, literally and mentally.
I love that I have the honour to be near a professional wrestler and a superstar in your own right. So, you’re currently holding eight championships?
It was never something on my bucket list to like to try and hold all these championships and be a belt collector or anything. It just sort of steadily happened one after the other. I won my first of the eight, which is the Riot Cabaret Women’s Championship back in August of 2022. And then the most recent one was in mid-January, which was the title Women’s Championship. It just steadily spiralled and spiralled. But it’s very cool because to my knowledge in the world, there has never been another female who’s held that many championships in one time.
Within wrestling, there’s a famous photo of a wrestler called Ultimo Dragon, who’s a male wrestler who held 10 championships at one time. When I won my eighth, I booked in a photo shoot with one of my favourite photographers to try and pay a homage to that photo and get some of my own as well.
It’s very cool knowing that there’s that many companies out there wanting me to be the face of their women’s division in their company.
It’s inspiring for young girls looking on at you, a strong woman killing it! But on the other side, to be at that level, there must be some serious work going on by you behind the scenes to maintain that success. What is your physical regime?
The difficulty of being a wrestler is there’s no rhyme or reason to my schedule so I can have one week where there’s one match and the rest of my time, I’m coaching wrestling and then there can be another week where I have eight matches in nine days. Therefore, it’s difficult getting a routine. All I can do is just try and stay in the gym as much as possible and eat the best as I can.
When traveling and being on the road it is difficult to stay healthy, so trying to be as prepared as possible like preparing my meals is good. If not it’s just a case of making the best choices that I can and if I’m powering through on that many shows and I need a chocolate bar to get through – I’ll have a chocolate bar!
What’s your favourite chocolate bar?
I’m a sucker for anything peanut butter related. Reese’s Pieces are great and if my husband comes to a show, he will always bring them. One of the crew will just pass me something and say, ‘This is from your husband’ and they’ll just deliver me a Reese’s which is sweet.
Aside from the Reese’s I try and keep my diet as good as possible just trying to make sure that I’m getting as much fruit and veg in my diet as possible so that at least it’s as nutrient dense.
The hard this with wrestling is you must just be an absolute machine. You’ve got to have good fitness and be strong, but you’ve also got to be agile. Wrestling encompasses a bit of everything. I coach a lot which means I’ve got access to a ring pretty much whenever I want. I also attend a lot of fitness classes.
It’s important to put your body into shock as much as possible with different trainers, as you have to take into account the size of the opponent that you’re working with. What their strengths are, whether they’re a striker, whether they’re a powerhouse, or whether they’re a highflier.
Ultimately, you really must be kept on your toes in terms of fitness all the time and I just always strive to be the most hybrid athlete that I can possibly be.
You’ve mentioned just then your husband brings you Reese’s Pieces, which is super cute, and it obviously sounds like he’s supportive. One can imagine competing and having to be at such a peak level of fitness can also challenge your mental fitness as well. How do you keep yourself mentally healthy when you’re doing all this training and coaching. How do you stay grounded before an event? Do you get nervous? What’s that process like for you?
I definitely still get nervous! My level of nerves depends on the situation. Any match where there’s a championship involved, there’s going to be extra nerves there because there’s more at stake. Later on, in the main event of the show, I know that the pressure is on me because the show is building up towards my match and my match is the match that’s going to send everyone home. Similarly, if I’m in the opening match, there’s a lot of pressure there as well because you need to be ready earlier. You don’t have as much time to get ready, but you’re also setting the tone for the show.
I think if you don’t get nervous in something, then you don’t care about it enough. But I’m getting to a point where I can manage it a lot better. A lot of it is just learning to be kind to myself and learning that I’m always doing my best. And if something doesn’t work the way I want it to, I try not to beat myself up about it. I just trying to go back to the drawing board and think, okay, how can I fix that? How can I improve that for next time? Wrestling is very high pressure a lot of the time, including having lots of eyes on you constantly.
I think anyone in any industry can take something from that. The athlete’s mindset of, okay, maybe that didn’t work in my favour, but I can learn from that and change something moving forward.
Even when I’m coaching wrestling, I try and coach the mental side of it as much as the physical side because wrestling is constantly putting yourself in positions that your natural instincts don’t want you to be in. It’s a case of fighting your comfort zones constantly. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way that I’ve learned from. Therefore, trying to impart that on people from the get -go, even when people are first starting to train, helping them cope with the mental side of things and how to challenge themselves, but not push themselves too far, is just as important as the physical side of wrestling.
Wrestling is such a unique profession to become emersed in, it’s a whole world a lot of people have no idea about! How did it all start for you?
Absolutely. I’ve got two older brothers. They’re 10 and 12 years older than me. They loved wrestling and a lot of times when they were babysitting me, wrestling was on the TV.
So, when I say I’ve been into wrestling since birth, it’s pretty much true, because as long as I can remember, we had wrestling on in the house and we were watching it. And in some cases, despite the warnings of do not try this at home, we were trying stuff out when we were younger.
My brothers found it really fun and enjoyable to pick me up, throw me around in the safety of our sofa cushions, things like that. I just always remembered it being part of my childhood and having an interest in it. It wasn’t just some foreign thing that they did in America, it was superheroes to me, however, it did not compute that that was something that you could do with your life.
So I went to theatre, dancing, singing, and acting. And then turning 25 had a quarter -life crisis. That’s always my short version of it. When someone asks, how did you get into wrestling, I say quarter -life crisis. I truly felt like I wanted to try something different.
My body always naturally wanted to be a bit curvier and more muscular and stronger, which was not the desirable dancer physique. I felt like I was always fighting that. I came home after back -to -back auditions one day and turned-on WWE on the TV. I saw how strong and sexy the women looked there. But they looked powerful as well. And I felt like that was more the body type that my body was trying to be.
The wrestling physique was shunned in the dance world. It was not a desirable physique to have. And so initially, that was the crazy moment in my head where I was like, well, I’m going to do that instead because they’re celebrated for looking like they do in their industry.
So initially, it was a body image thing. I was like, OK, well, what can I do? How can I make a career that fits my body rather than trying to make my body fit into a career? And then I found a training school and went to my first session. I felt like everything just made sense and this is what I should be doing.
Also, having a natural understanding of your body from dancing really helps. With dancing, you’re used to watching something and repeating it in your own body. Then there is the performance side, the acting side and partner work. This is a lot like wrestling, two bodies coming together, and it all just made sense to me.
It’s very refreshing to hear someone at your level voice that you didn’t force yourself to stick in something that was not working for you. I believe this can lead to serious comparison and body image difficulties. You followed what felt right in the present moment and walk a different path which is inspiring.
Your brand is the ‘Nina Samuels Show’, which is your sassy and confident wrestling personality. How did this professional persona start and evolve?
I spent so long in my wrestling career not having a defined character. I was just trying to be an amped up version of myself. And then it was when I started working with WWE and saw how I was presented in a sort of episodic television format, and I realised I needed a niche to stand out. In trying to come up with a character, one of my favourite wrestlers at the time was a wrestler in WWE called The Miz. And his whole persona is like the Hollywood actor showman type.
I knew I wanted to channel this and make it more theatrical. One of the writers in WWE at the time had a musical theatre background himself. So, I bounced a lot of ideas off him because he understood those sorts of type of characters that you get in that musical theatre type of world. He understood some of the references and he would basically just challenge me. So, I would say, OK, so I’m thinking that my character does this, this, this. And he would present a challenge to me for me to go away and think about. Since then, it’s just been an ongoing evolution, to be honest.
When was Nina Samuels created?
It was about six years ago that I really started homing in on that character. And still to this day, I’m evolving as I go. I take certain influences from old films like ‘Showgirls’ or ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’, which I absolutely love. It’s good when you can pick out certain pop culture references to put in your character because then that’s how you can cross platforms. There’s a lot of wrestlers in WWE that are really into anime and video games, and they apply those references to their characters and manage to cross over in that way, which I think is a great way to make your character multi -dimensional.
In Wrestling, you can just decide what character you’re going to be, because again going back to dancing, you’re trying to fit into the roles you have and even the costumes, you’re being assigned. This is your costume that you wear, whether it flatters you or not, whereas in wrestling, I get to design my own costume. I love it because you don’t have to put yourself in a box. You can evolve yourself and create whatever kind of character, superhero, supervillain that you want to be.
What parts of you are similar to ‘Nina Samuels’ and what are the main differences between ‘Nina’ and you, Sam?
My wardrobe has become more and more Nina as I’ve gone on. I realised I didn’t have any in between, between just me and my gym clothes and me in full on Nina glam. Pink isn’t even my favourite colour, but by this point I have so much pink clothing.
I’d like to think I’m a much nicer person than Nina Samuels is. I have certain Nina elements where I can be quite extra as a person sometimes, especially with my students as Wrestling is an over-the-top world. When I’m not in full Nina mode, I’m just in my gym gear because after lockdown, I realised why ever go back to a non -elastic case of waistband ever again!
I think it’s important to remember that wrestling is a very all -consuming world therefore it’s important to remember that there’s a life outside that so I still make sure that makes plenty of time for my friends outside of wrestling. Even my friends that are in wrestling, when we spend time together, we don’t talk about wrestling.
I also try and keep my social media very Nina, promoting my brand, promoting shows that I’m doing and things. I like to keep my family for me, and not put it on social media. I think my husband and I went one year into our relationship without taking a photo together anyway!
What have you got coming up that people can look out for and see Nina Samuels in action?
I’m regularly competing at pro wrestling championships that I hold which is an all-female promotion based in London. Big Penny Social in Walthamstow happen every month where I love performing. Riot Cabaret is another one of my regular shows as well, which is at the Clapham Grand, which is an awesome venue.
And depending on when this is coming out, I’m going to be going over to America for WrestleMania weekend, which I’m really, really excited about. The first time I was meant to go for WrestleMania weekend was in 2020. So that trip did not happen. I’m excited to meet all the fans that I have in the States that normally I just communicate with via social media. So, it’d be nice to put some faces to the names and meet the fans there. So super excited about that.
You are such a good example of someone who found there what they want to do, found their calling, as it were, and just pursued it. What would your advice be for someone who, you know, really wants to go for something like you have with your wrestling?
I love the quote, ‘You only regret the chances you didn’t take’. If you never try, you’ll never know, essentially. It’s always worth trying something. And if it’s not for you, it doesn’t matter. It’s nothing to be upset about. You’ve tried it. And at least you can say, cool, I gave that a go. Whereas if you don’t try it, you’ll always have that lingering feeling of, oh, I could have done that.
If it’s a case of trying something and failing it or always having that niggling thought that you never tried something, I know which one I’d rather do. And like I say, me trying wrestling was something completely wild on a quarter life crisis whim which ended up being the absolute best thing that’s ever happened to me. I met so many of my best friends, I met my husband, and I found a job that I absolutely love and adore. So, yeah, it’s always worth going for it and giving it a try. I think the best things are found outside of your comfort zone.
Reporter: Gemma Gordon @gemmaegordon
Nina’s links: www.instagram.com/ninasamuels123/
