When you spend about 30 seconds with WWE ring saying legend, Lilian Garcia, you acknowledge shortly why she’s been a staple face on tv for 20 years.
Garcia is energetic, good, collected, and people qualities bounce off the partitions immediately when speaking to her. She’s only a common particular person, proper? Fallacious. It is Lilian Garcia for crying out loud. She’s a lady synonymous with the professional wrestling trade and whose voice echoes throughout a few of the most memorable moments within the historical past of the enterprise. She’s an icon.
That is why one of the vital essential solutions I wanted about Garcia got here from her fiance, Patrick Ellrich. Ellrich is without doubt one of the few on planet Earth that is aware of what it is prefer to prepare for a date with the longtime WWE ring announcer. So, I pried. I went there.
What’s it prefer to prepare for a date with Lilian Garcia?
“Simply be cool,” Ellrich stated about his preparation forward of his first date with Garcia. “Clearly, I am nervous, however as quickly as I picked her up and as quickly as we begin speaking, there’s was simply on the spot consolation. I knew I used to be coping with only a tremendous real particular person and any nerves sort of simply went away at that time.”
Simply be cool? That may have ended my probabilities.
Ellrich is correct, although. As a hoop announcer in professional wrestling for all these years, Garcia oozed authenticity when she was on the market. She talked on the viewers, but additionally with them in a approach that was real. Garcia helped make the world of professional wrestling actual.
The world of wrestling gave one thing actual to Garcia too. Real love. In an unique interview with The Takedown on SI, Garcia and Ellrich opened up on their story and the way the distinctive professional wrestling enterprise introduced them collectively. Like wrestling, it is wild and delightful.
“My pal Candace Michelle, from WWE, was encouraging me to go on a (courting) app and take a look at it,” Garcia stated. So I Googled Hinge and I Googled Bumble, and I favored the truth that Bumble had an incognito mode. I obtained on Bumble. I met this man on there and so we determined to do a date. Instantly once I met him, I used to be like, ‘oh, no, this isn’t my man.’”
That man wasn’t the man for Garcia, nevertheless it was that man and that date, which led her to Patrick.
“We went inside this faucet home and I see Patrick behind the bar, and I am like, he is extra of my kind,” Garcia stated. So, we had been simply chit chatting, however I used to be like, focus, you are on a date!”
The identify of the faucet home was Correct Hop Taphouse and Patrick had owned it for 4 years at that time. It was a spot that he referred to as an ideal first date joint. Patrick is a former impartial wrestler and tag group accomplice of Xavier Woods. Patrick stated that when Garcia was ordering her drink, he tried to place a reputation with the acquainted face.
“I had not been watching a ton of wrestling,” Ellrich stated. “I am maintaining with Xavier Woods — my good pal. So, I sustain with him and this acquainted face is available in. I am attempting to position her. Then they go outdoors and speak. When she stated Lilian, I used to be like, ‘oh cool.’
“So yeah, I went again inside, got here again out, and I simply needed to say hello and share my story along with her and my ties to wrestling. I stated I truly used to wrestle and my my tag group accomplice for just a few years — he is a superb pal of mine — was Xavier Woods. I actually simply needed to say hello. Simply that. That is it. I simply needed to say, what’s up?”
Xavier Woods was a key participant in Lilian Garcia love story
After the chit-chatting and Garcia revealing to Patrick that there would not be a second date with the gentleman she was with, the 2 strangers texted a photograph of them to Xavier Woods. Woods would develop into a pivotal participant within the continuation of their relationship.
“I present up that subsequent Monday and I see Xavier at ringside,” Garcia stated. And he is like, ‘you met my boy, Patrick! We have been buddies endlessly. He was in my wedding ceremony. He is such an ideal man.’ That is key. As a result of once I joined Bumble, I prayed for God to make this fast, make this painless, and I might quite have anyone vetted. So, the truth that Xavier was like, ‘this man is superior.’ I am like, that is actually cool.”
Garcia stated that Woods instructed her that she and Patrick made a superb wanting couple within the photograph that was texted his approach.
“That is once I instructed him, give him my quantity and inform him to ship me the photograph,” Garcia stated. “I by no means obtained a replica, proper? So he gave him a quantity and instantly he texted me. He stated I used to be gonna ask to your quantity that day, however you had been on a date. It will have been somewhat bizarre. Then he requested me out and we went out that following Monday. We have been collectively ever since.”
“He is in all probability glad that we have tapered off the textual content messages that we had been sending him for some time, simply giving him unsolicited updates on our lives collectively,” Ellrich stated of Woods. “Now, he is tremendous glad, and he did play an enormous half in it — simply sort of facilitating that first actual true line of communication.
“It is blown my thoughts how this complete factor occurred”
Garcia and Ellrich are engaged to be married and the plan is to tie the knot in 2026, although a date is not set right now. The professional wrestling trade was the inspiration their relationship was constructed on, however the timing was good too.
“Again in 2021, I take into consideration how low I used to be,” Garcia stated. “I used to be on the lowest. I had misplaced each my dad and mom to most cancers. My marriage fell aside. It was simply such an intense second. And simply by God’s grace — and I say that as a result of that was the one factor in 2021, I totally surrendered myself to Christ. When a pal instructed me about going to church, I went along with her, and it was like, I’ve tried to do life my approach, and now I am simply totally surrendering.
“I wanted that point. I wanted the 4 years of actually therapeutic from my previous and therapeutic from dropping my dad and mom and sitting in my childhood dwelling and simply therapeutic from previous traumas. All of that then introduced me to the Atlanta space and in the end to assembly Patrick. It is simply blown my thoughts how this complete factor occurred.”
Ellrich is a former professional wrestler and Garcia appreciates the truth that she will be able to speak store with him whereas they’re at dwelling.
“She’s simply gotten me so again into wrestling. I am like, time to observe Uncooked,” Ellrich stated. “So, I have been watching a ton of wrestling and it is enjoyable. I nonetheless know all of the names, all of the strikes, and I believe that is what she likes about it.”
“I can say kayfabe,” Garcia stated. “And (he) completely understands.”
The professional wrestling enterprise introduced them collectively and so they’ll each be round it even longer now. Garcia introduced in October that she signed a two-year contract to stick with WWE. Garcia returned and did some fill-in work because the ring announcer on Uncooked and SmackDown. She’s additionally the common ring announcer for the WWE Saturday Night time’s Major Occasion program, which airs quarterly on Peacock.
Garcia’s subsequent main historical past making second takes place on December 13. On that date, she’s hoping to announce John Cena forward of his last WWE match ever. Cena will wrestle both LA Knight or Gunther on the last WWE Saturday Night time’s Major Occasion of the yr in his retirement match.
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