Saraya, formerly known as Paige from WWE, has found her passion for wrestling again as she was medically cleared to return to in-ring action last year shortly after making her AEW debut.
The former WWE star had been sidelined for years due to her not being medically cleared by WWE’s doctors as she has spinal stenosis. Saraya had pushed several times to do things for the company, whether that be a manager, ambassador, and GM. However, for the majority of her time, while she was not cleared to wrestle, the company didn’t do much with her.
After her WWE departure, something the company decided to do as they didn’t renew her deal under the Vince McMahon regime, it was reported Triple tried to sign her once he took over creative ahead of her deal expiring.
Saraya was offered the General Manager position a month before her deal not being renewed, a role she had years ago on SmackDown. WWE higher-ups were open to seeing if a doctor could medically clear her if she wanted to return to the ring and wrestle.
While appearing on The Mark Hoke Show, Saraya noted that she was miserable at the end of her WWE tenure because they weren’t using her.
“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.”
You can listen to the entire interview by clicking on the player below:
H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription
