Worlds collide with WWE star Zelina Vega
The professional wrestler chats with us about her lifelong passion for gaming and cosplay—and how she balances it with her career in the ring.
Zelina Vega contains multitudes.
The native New Yorker dominates in the ring as a WWE superstar, the reigning queen of the Latino World Order (LWO), a WWE tag-team champion, and “Queens Crown” tournament winner.
Vega also dominates on the sticks. Gaming and cosplay are lifelong passions. This year, Vega got the opportunity of a gaming lifetime when she was asked to join the commentary cast of Street Fighter 6. She took it a step further at the 2023 Royal Rumble, where she cosplayed as Juri Han.
It comes as no surprise that gaming was a fixture of Vega’s home growing up. Her dad played an original Game Boy and her mom mashed buttons, too.
“I got into it really young. My mom played Mortal Kombat. I remember seeing her play that as a kid,” Vega says. “I was like, okay, that is the coolest thing ever. She was like, ‘Okay, yeah, you can play, just don’t tell your dad.’ And then obviously my dad was already playing Tekken with me.”
So it was “one of the craziest things” to participate in the WWE x Street Fighter 6 collab as an adult.
“They’ve never done that before,” she says. “So, it was such a cool thing to be the first person to do that. To see the VR [virtual reality] of the Street Fighter logo, I never knew they did anything like that.”
Vega relishes upending assumptions about how she wrestles—and games.
“We’re pretty savage, bro,” she exclaims. “I think that’s such a funny thing. People will look at me and say, ‘Oh my God, she’s so small, but her personality is like 7 feet 8 [inches].’ But I feel like it’s anybody who’s from New York—it’s just how we are … we will stop at nothing until we make it.”
She adds: “When I was on the side of the Barclay Center [in Brooklyn, N.Y.], I was like, ‘Damn, I really made it.’”
When I asked her to name the best gamer in the WWE locker room, Vega gave the nod to a member of The New Day—but not the member you might think.
“I hate to say it, but it’s Kofi. He’s beaten me so many times [in games], and I try to be calm because there’s a camera there, but inside I’m like, stewing.”
Like a true gamer, Vega never leaves the house unarmed. She always carries a Nintendo Switch with her on the road. She’d bring the consoles, too, but fellow WWE superstar Xavier Woods—who’s also a member of The New Day and host of UpUpDownDown—has her covered.
“So I’m just like, okay, we’re good, what are you feeling today? Tekken? Alright, let’s go,” she says.
The sheer awesomeness of her job is not lost on Vega.
“It’s such a cool thing. Like, not only do we get to do what we love and be a part of WWE and get to entertain our fans in that capacity, but we also get to just be little kids and just play games and play superheroes,” she says. “It’s like we’re playing the superheroes backstage, and literally playing with them in the video games, and then we get to be that out in the ring. It’s pretty cool.”
Wrestling tops the priority list for Vega, but don’t expect her to hang up her controller anytime soon. If anything, she’ll keep exploring the intersection of the two. The WWE superstar has some plans on the horizon, forming a tag team, albeit not in the ring with fellow superstar Dakota Kai.
“Me and Dakota Kai are trying to do a Twitch podcast kind of thing. It’s where she and I can kind of just get in there and talk about games and start gaming with each other and some of the fans,” she says. “Have some guests on there to talk about their experiences with games too. Just two nerdy girls nerding out.”
To catch Vega’s passion and intensity on the sticks, tune in to her Twitch stream at theatrinidad. To catch her in the ring, tune in to WWE SmackDown Friday nights at 8 p.m. on Fox.
You never know—she might even cosplay as your favorite character.
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