Thekla knows her behavior around some of AEW’s youngest fans probably isn’t going to win her any role model awards, but she doesn’t seem too worried about it. In fact, one awkward moment involving two kids has now turned into an entire running joke about her growing army of “Toxic Toddlers.”
Speaking to Playby, Thekla was asked about recently declaring that “Thekla is for the children.” She explained that the whole thing started after a clip caught her repeatedly using one of her favorite insults while two young fans happened to be standing right beside her.
“I did one of my famous dumb bitch quotes. There’s this clip of me saying it on the stage, and there’s like two small children standing right next to me as I’m calling this girl a dumb bitch, and everybody cheering, and those kids just look at me.”
The moment quickly took on a life of its own online, especially because of the kids’ reactions. Thekla said people kept pointing out just how funny and inappropriate the whole situation looked, which eventually led Renee Paquette to ask whether Thekla was really “for the children.”
“For a long time, people pointed out how hilarious and wrong the whole situation is, and Renee [Paquette] asked me in an interview, I think, you know, jokingly, ‘Is Thekla for the children?’ And I said, ‘Hell yeah, Thekla is for the children. You know, shout out to my toxic toddlers.’ Now it’s becoming a bit.”
Apparently, those two kids weren’t exactly traumatized by their encounter with Thekla either. Their father eventually reached out and revealed that both children were actually big fans of hers.
“I love kids. The father of those two little children actually tagged me in a comment like, ‘Hey, I’m the father, and the kids are big Thekla fans.’ They were just like, ‘Daddy, what is a bitch?’”
That left their dad with one pretty uncomfortable vocabulary lesson to handle. Thekla joked that somebody was eventually going to teach them what the word meant anyway, so it might as well have been “Auntie Thekla.”
“We have got to figure out how we explain that to the young ones. I’m sure somebody will, you know, teach them the hard way, anyway, at some point. Let it be Auntie Thekla.”
What started as an unintentionally hilarious moment with two young fans has now basically become part of Thekla’s act. Instead of running away from the criticism, she’s leaned straight into it, and her “Toxic Toddlers” now have their own origin story.
What do you think about Thekla embracing the controversy surrounding her behavior around young wrestling fans? Let us know in the comments below.
