WWE’s Jade Cargill on Embracing Being a Heel & Her Rhea Ripley Rematch

Heading into year three in WWE, Jade Cargill has figured out exactly who she is, and she is not interested in being liked. Ahead of a rematch with Rhea Ripley in front of a rowdy European crowd, Cargill made it clear she is leaning all the way into the villain role.

She owned what went wrong last time, too. Cargill said she had been playing with her food rather than going for the kill, entertaining the crowd and getting high on the energy, until Ripley took advantage of the opening. This time, she promised, the approach is totally different. She loves coming to Europe, where the crowds are electric, and she is hoping to hear nothing but boos on Sunday.

That is the tell. Cargill feeds off the boos, and when the show noted she seems more in her bag as a heel than as a fan favorite, she did not argue. "I'm a natural heel," she said. "People hate what they can't be." From there she launched into the kind of self-celebration that makes a great villain work: she looks good, she smells good, she is one of one, and nobody else has her body year-round. Gorgeous by her own account, and God-given. The haters, she said, keep her paid, and whether the talk is good or bad, she still trends.

The show pushed back, gently, that none of this actually makes her a bad guy. She was simply stating facts. Cargill made clear she works for it, too. This was not always the dream, she pointed out, and her very first match ever happened on live television against the likes of Shaquille O'Neal and champion Cody Rhodes, the kind of debut almost no one gets. Five years into the business, always on the main roster, already a champion, she figures the experiment is working.

The most reflective moment came from a question she said no one had ever asked her, the one the No Contest Wrestling hosts call the Mark Henry question: what was it like putting her head on the pillow that first night as champion of the world? Cargill admitted she barely had time to digest it, because wrestling is always off to the next thing. But it felt like a checkpoint, she said, a step toward the only destination she cares about. She wants to be a legend, whether people like it or not, and in that moment she simply felt blessed and worthy of something she had long ago manifested.