Road warrior: Coussoulis Arena awaits Victoria
By Michelle Gardner, Staff Writer
October 14, 2005
Lisa Marie Varon would be lost without her calendar and her cell phone. Unlike professional athletes in other sports, there is no off-season for wrestlers. She spends at least 200 days a year on the road, trekking through four or more cities a week. She will be performing in a ring Saturday in Honolulu. Then it is back to the mainland and San Jose on Sunday and on to Sacramento on Monday. Afterward, she will board a red-eye flight to Connecticut where she and other women from the World Wrestling Entertainment will be shooting a magazine layout early Tuesday morning.
Varon, who wrestles under the stage name Victoria, is back in her native San Bernardino County, albeit briefly.
She and her WWE colleagues will be appearing at Coussoulis Arena tonight. She is scheduled to partner with real-life friend Torrie Wilson in a tag team match against Trish Stratus and recent Diva Search winner Ashley Massaro.
The show has been sold out for weeks, but she has 20 tickets reserved for friends and family who will watch her compete just minutes from where she grew up.
“There is no place like home,” she said. “That’s really true. I don’t get back here often so I appreciate the little time I have.”
She did have two days to spend with family, but has several radio interviews lined up today in addition to a 3 p.m. appearance at Living Spaces in Rancho Cucamonga.
Varon, who grew up in Rialto and graduated from Eisenhower High School, now makes her home in Louisville because the WWE’s main training facility is located there. She hasn’t been back to Southern California to visit family in nearly a year and can’t remember the last holiday she spent with them.
They do attend shows within commuter distance, the next of which will be at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim where the WWE will stage its televised Raw event Oct. 31. If they’re lucky, they will see her for 20 minutes after that show, before she takes off for the next destination.
Hectic yes, frenetic sometimes. But you won’t find this diva complaining.
“You have to love what you do or you couldn’t keep up with this schedule. And I really love what I do,” Varon said. “It’s a total adrenalin rush when you come through the curtain and your music is playing and thousands of people are out there screaming.”
Parents Angel and Hediye Sole, who moved from the house their four children grew up in to Apple Valley this week, say they are happy their daughter has found a career she is passionate about, but they have trouble with the long separations.
“Sometimes I will see mothers with their daughters in the store or walking down the street and I get jealous,” Hediye Sole said. “I am happy she is happy but I just miss her so much.”
Angel Sole speaks like a true father.
“We worry about her traveling so much,” he said. “It’s not like it used to be.”
Varon is in her fifth year working the WWE circuit, which makes her a veteran among the women competitors although she says she is still learning every day. The WWE has shifted from emphasizing the athletic side of its women in the ring to using them more as eye candy.
Because of that, many of the established women were released or asked to be let go. Varon is closest to Gail Kim and Jackie Gayda, both of whom are now working for TNA. She was in Gayda’s wedding to fellow wrestler Charlie Haas earlier this year.
She is happiest when she is in the ring against one of the few experienced women remaining.
“I like getting in there and being able to show my athletic moves,” she said. “Trish and I have worked together so much that we really end up belting each other around. We really want to make the people in the back take notice.”
Varon’s character has spent most of her five years as a villain, turning back from being good just a few months ago. She admits the character never went over as well as a heroine and enjoys being devious. There is just one drawback though.
“Little kids are afraid of me,” she said with a chuckle.
Her parents also like seeing her alter ego on the bad side.
“She’s so good at being bad,” Hediye Sole said. “It’s funny to watch because she is such a different person.”
Credit: San Bernardino County Sun
