WWE News: WWE Pursuing Top Olympic Athlete For Career In Sports Entertainment

WWE’s style of sports entertainment and amateur, or Olympic wrestling, aren’t exactly synonymous, but it doesn’t stop people from projecting successful Olympic competitors into future WWE superstars. Whenever a wrestler has a standout performance in the Olympic Games, especially if they’re American, fans of the WWE want them to pursue a career in the squared circle.

Names like Dennis Hall, Garrett Lowney, Adam Wheeler, Jordan Burroughs, Cael Sanderson, and Rulon Gardner have all intrigued the WWE Universe but never made the switch to the WWE. There remains only one Olympic gold medalist ever to compete for the WWE, and that, of course, is Kurt Angle. However, one-half of American Alpha, Chad Gable, also represented his country at the 2012 Summer Games and signed a WWE developmental deal the following year.

And now it appears the WWE is in pursuit of another Olympic athlete. According to Squared Circle Sirens, who primarily report on news involving the female superstars in WWE, the company is scouting Adeline Gray. The 25-year old Gray is currently in Rio for the Olympics where she’ll put her 37-match winning streak on the line. The three-time World Champion has also finished third in the World on two other occasions, and she first won the Junior World Championship at age 17.

There’s no indication that Grey is or isn’t interested in signing with the WWE as her focus is clearly on Rio and trying to secure a gold medal for the United States. But it’s extremely interesting and refreshing that the company has sent scouts to watch her wrestle. It’s not known if Gerald Briscoe is one of the officials tasked with watching her up close, but he is heavily entrenched in recruiting amateur wrestlers to the WWE, specifically at the annual college championships.

The Olympic Games are some of the most-watched television in the world, so capitalizing on any of that popularity would certainly benefit the WWE. Ironically, it was revealed last week that Daniel Bryan was booked to appear on Monday Night RAW in an effort to boost ratings on a night the WWE was in direct competition with the Olympics. It didn’t move the needle back in their direction that much, so they’re trying the next best thing.

The WWE has placed a renewed focus on their women’s division over the last year, first claiming that a Divas Revolution was upon us last summer, and then re-branding the division entirely by dropping the Divas title and moniker to help put them on even footing with their male counterparts. It’s a division of young, hungry, beautiful, and talented women, led by Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch.

Of those women, Charlotte is the oldest at 30, with much of the rest of the division under that mark. It’s difficult to tell how long it would take Grey to make it to the main roster, but with her background and success, it wouldn’t be unfair to say she’d be in a WWE ring in a short period of time. Imagine adding an Olympic champion to perhaps the greatest collection of female superstars the company has ever had?

To put her recent success into perspective, Adeline Grey won her final match at the U.S. Olympic Trials in April in one minute and five seconds. The average match during that event was six minutes. The Colorado native is set to compete on Thursday in the 75kg weight class of women’s freestyle wrestling. Now more than ever, especially for WWE fans, she’ll certainly be worth keeping an eye out for. She would become the first American woman to win the gold in her sport if she is able to accomplish what she’s certainly set out to do. Americans and the WWE will surely be rooting her on.

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