Zelina Vega is mapping out her next moves… in cosplay.
Outside of professional wrestling, Zelina Vega has another love: cosplay. As such, Vega has taken on the challenge of merging those two worlds together. Throughout her WWE career, Zelina Vega has utilized her ring gear to pay homage to several characters within film, anime, and video games. One of Vega’s most recent tributes emanated from this year’s Royal Rumble event in San Antonio, where the 32-year-old embodied Juri Han from Street Fighter 6.
In an interview with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard, Vega discussed her Street Fighter-inspired gear, and how the game series influenced her ring name and wrestling style.
“For me, I’m big into character design and big into the characters themselves. Like, how do they become who they are, you know? Vega was a huge, huge inspiration, not just to my wrestling style, but my name itself. So Vega, from Zelina Vega, came from Street Fighter. Really it’s just getting into the character, and also the game is just fun,” she said.
As Zelina Vega continues crafting her next cosplay, she has a few ideas from inside the anime realm. One particular idea is for a Naruto cosplay, although she hasn’t found the right way to execute it properly yet in the wrestling realm just yet.
“Well, so right now, I’m kind of battling with the fact that I want to do Neji. I’ve been wanting to do Neji Hyuga from Naruto for the longest time, but I haven’t found the right way of doing it,” she explained. “Usually I just bring those elements into my gear that already is kind of structured. But there’s no way to bring Neji’s [presentation to life]. He doesn’t have specific coloring. He doesn’t have a specific kind of logo or something that makes me think of Neji necessarily. And if I’m blonde, and he has black hair, it’s kind of hard to say, ‘Oh, I’m Neji.’ So I’ve been trying to find a way to make it make sense.”
Upon transitioning into a babyface role on television, Vega opted to look at Naruto‘s Rock Lee for inspiration. When she played a heel, Vega admitted she liked to “stay on the heel side,” with characters like Madara Uchiha. Now as a babyface, though, Zelina Vega said she had “so many other people” to play with now.
“Neji is definitely the person where I’m just like, ‘How do I bring this in and people will recognize it?’ That’s really my biggest thing. With Juri [from Street Fighter], I will say what was difficult was the hair. That was the hardest part because space buns don’t stay like that. So, it’s like five hours of hairspray and a lot of stuff.”
Check out our full interview with Zelina Vega below:
RELATED: Zelina Vega Hopes The Stars Align For A Match At WWE Backlash
