Before finding her way to AEW, Saraya spent over a decade with WWE and is widely credited with helping reinvent the company’s approach to women’s wrestling.
However, she spent the last four years of her WWE run on the sidelines after suffering a second serious neck injury. While the star initially appeared as SmackDown General Manager and in other non-wrestling roles, she eventually disappeared from television altogether.
While appearing on The Mark Hoke Show, Saraya opened up about this period of her career, revealing that it made her miserable and depressed. The first-ever NXT Women’s Champion said that she was prevented from really doing anything which meant she was unable to even attempt to replace the rush she got from wrestling.
“It’s not replaceable though. The feeling that you get from something you love is just not replaceable. You can’t just fill it with something else.
I was doing Twitch but I was also being held back so much when I was in the WWE because they just didn’t give me the freedom to do what I wanted to do, to even try and find something else that could potentially fill that void and then also, they didn’t want me doing media, they didn’t want me to do anything so I was sitting on my ass for a couple years and people thought I enjoyed that.
No, I hated that. I was miserable, it made me very depressed. Not to the point where I started doing drugs and drinking again because I was a lot smarter by that point but it would make me so miserable, like not being able to do anything.”
Saraya Returned To The Ring With AEW
Although many believed her in-ring career was over, Saraya returned to the square circle at Full Gear 2022 to defeat Britt Baker. Her most recent match came on the May 3rd edition of Dynamite when she overcame Willow Nightingale as The Outcasts continue to wage war on the AEW women’s division.
H/t to POST Wrestling