Serena Williams names player who inspired her famous growl on way to legendary Grand Slam titles

Serena Williams has always admired Monica Seles.

In fact, the 23-time Grand Slam champion idolized Seles so much that she even modeled her grunt after her.

Retired tennis icon Williams recently experienced the wings of death in First We Feast’s hugely popular YouTube series, “Hot Ones.”

The interview-based show sees celebrities eating increasingly spicy chicken wings while trying to answer increasingly nuanced questions from host Sean Evans.

Hot Ones shared a teaser of Serena’s upcoming debut on social media where she explains how her famous growl came to be.

Williams, like many other tennis players past and present, grunted between points.

She says it was inspired by Seles, a nine-time Grand Slam winner, who she loved watching growing up.

“So I growled because growing up I loved this tennis player named Monica Seles and she growls. She had this really cool growl. It was like…” she said, imitating Seles’ growl.

“And then it became natural and my growl became like a…” Williams added.

Seles is one of the greatest tennis players of all time and was the victim of a knife attack on court in 1993.

She burst onto the scene at the age of 16 when she won the French Open in 1990, beating German legend Steffi Graf in the final.

The Yugoslav, who also represented the United States, won seven of the next eleven Grand Slam tournaments, including eight as a teenager.

She has won three consecutive Australian Opens and three consecutive French Opens, as well as two consecutive U.S. Opens.

But in 1993 she was the victim of a shocking attack by a tennis fan obsessed with Graf.

In a Citizen Cup quarter-final in Hamburg, Seles was facing Magdalena Maleeva when she was stabbed with a nine-inch knife in the back, between the shoulder blades.

Seles recovered from the stabbing in just a few weeks, but she did not return to the tennis court for two years and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression.

Seles finally returned to the tennis court in 1995, where she reached the final of the US Open and then won the Australian Open the following year.

She reached two more finals during her career, but did not win any further Grand Slam tournaments before finally ending her career in 2003.

Williams has consistently expressed his admiration for the former world number one over the years.

In 2009, she told David Letterman that Seles was her “role model” when it came to growling.

“He’s the first person I know who used to growl really loud and really hard, so that’s kind of how I modeled my growl,” Williams said.

“Yeah, because you have to have role models when it comes to growling.”

“I’ve always really loved Monica,” she told GQ Sports in 2018.

“I always wanted to play like Monica. She was my favorite player when I was younger, and I wanted to be like her. I wanted to hit like her, and I wanted to play like her.”

The two men have met five times in their careers, with Williams coming out on top in four of those encounters.