Tamina On Not Making It In WWE After Her Initial Tryout

Tamina talked about following in her father's footsteps on Lilian Garcia's podcast, and had also discussed not making it into WWE when she first tried out.

On following her father's footsteps

"I feel like everyone thinks and expects that coming into the wrestling industry, if you are a generation wrestler then it is so easy to get into it," said Tamina. "But while others don't realize this, it actually isn't because you have all these different generation wrestlers from Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, you know, you keep going down the line of all of us that have come up, it is nice because you have to try and put yourself, like, 'Okay, I am actually the daughter, or the son and now I have to live up to their expectations.' But really, no, you have to work even extra harder."

On not making it during her initial tryout.

"I tried out and didn't make it the first time. I tried out, and didn't make it, but I needed to lose weight. I was too big, there was all these different things I didn't make it to what they thought at the time a 'Diva' should be, and that wasn't me. Coming in, I was around 185 lbs; a big, strong Samoan girl. But at the same time it wasn't what they were looking for, but again, I look back to what my dad said: it is all about the timing.

That was when I had to go to Afa's school and train there for a little bit and kind of get it down to where you knew what you had to do and learn all the little bumps."

Tamina trained at the Wild Samoan Training Center in the Orlando area before getting into contact with WWE again in 2009. Before her second tryout, she had her father teach her how to do The Splash.