How Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel Helped Nikki A.S.H. Pitch Her New WWE Persona

New Raw Women’s Champion Nikki A.S.H. (Almost a Super Hero) has gone into detail in a number of interviews about how she created and pitched her new persona to WWE management. But in an appearance on Ryan Satin’s Out of Character Podcast on Monday, Nikki revealed the role current superhero films played in her idea. She explained that the box office success of female-led comic book films like Captain Marvel (1.128 billion in 2018) and the first Wonder Woman (822.3 million in 2017) was included in her pitch, saying, “I looked into research. So Wonder Woman, what were the numbers like at the box office? It was successful, but how much money did it make? [I was] looking at how much money Captain Marvel made, looking at the success, especially of female-led superhero movies and female-led television shows.

“Because you’ve got Supergirl, you’ve got Batwoman, you’ve got WandaVision, you’ve got Black Widow coming out, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman,” she added. “The female-led franchises and the female-led movies was what I wanted to focus on and show that there’s really been this big success. And it’s inspirational.”

A.S.H. won the Women’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match earlier this month, then cashed in her briefcase one day later to become Raw Women’s Champion for the first time in her career. She further discussed her inspirations for the character in a recent interview with ComicBook.

“So, for me, I was actually saying this earlier on too, I was such a huge fan of the X-Men cartoon and the Spider-Man cartoon,” she said. “I’ve always loved superhero cartoons and superhero movies, Marvel, DC, the Justice League, everything, Suicide Squad, everything with Marvel, we’ve just finished watching Loki, which I’m not going to, no spoilers. I loved Loki, WandaVision, Falcon, and Winter Soldier. Black Widow, we saw that last week and that was amazing.”

“So it just felt like the time was right, the time was right, and I always loved Hurricane Helms, the Hurricane character, Mighty Molly, I loved that when I first watched WWE. So for me, it’s, let’s take something we all love, like superheroes, let’s take wrestling, and let’s put them together in this lovely little fusion,” she continued. “To your point, I just wanted to do something that was super, pardon the pun, something very positive and I wanted something that was just energetic, something that’s inspirational because I think that I wanted a message to send to, I was 10 years old when I first started watching WWE, when I first started watching this amazing industry. So I wanted something that I could like reach out to a 10-year-old me for instance, and just I don’t have superpowers, unfortunately, not yet, anyway, I’m working on it Matt, I’m working on it with coffee a little bit of super strength and super speed.”