Natalya Praises WWE Star Who ‘Wrestled Like It Was WrestleMania’ Training At The Dungeon

Natalya has praised a WWE star who recently trained at The Dungeon facility and “wrestled like it was WrestleMania” there.

Carrying on the legacy of the famous Hart Dungeon, Natalya and TJ Wilson now run The Dungeon 2.0, where indie wrestlers, WWE stars and even some AEW talents often train.

Natalya has revealed that one of the names training there recently was Ilja Dragunov ahead of his return from injury and winning the WWE United States Championship.

On the Joe Vulpis Podcast, Natalya praised Dragunov and commented on him training at The Dungeon, saying:

“What we do every week is basically have an actors’ studio, but for wrestlers.

“So it’s like four hours a week of really high intensity training to get people ready to come back to the ring, or get them polished up or fine tuning, or just people that love doing it.

“Angelo Dawkins has been coming for almost four years like clockwork 52 weeks a year. And he’s always ready. He just stays ready.

“Ilja Dragunov, he just came back, just won the US Title. Two days before he won the title, he came to our Dungeon and he was working on stuff.

“He was just pouring sweat. I was watching him work and I was like, I told TJ, ‘I can’t get over Ilja. I can’t get over how good he is.’ He’s so good.

“He’s wrestling in our ring with no air conditioning in the middle of nowhere, and he’s wrestling like it’s WrestleMania. And I love that passion.

“So everyone in the class was stepping it up that night, they were trying to be so much better because they were so inspired by Ilja.”

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Dragunov won the WWE US Title from Sami Zayn and has since taken ownership of the US Title open challenge, retaining the title against Aleister Black last week.