Saraya joined Busted Open Radio on Thursday with Dave LaGreca and Natalya Neidhart to discuss her new memoir and her career. During the interview, she spoke candidly about missing WWE, her reaction to AJ Lee’s return, her current health, and her hopes of stepping back into the ring.
The former WWE Divas Champion said she still feels a connection to WWE and the people she worked with. Saraya explained, “I’m always going to have that feeling, because WWE is doing amazing things right now. I miss being in the locker room. I miss being around people like Natty. I miss my sisters. I miss being a part of these things.”
She described AJ Lee’s return as a major moment for her personally, calling AJ her “fairy godmother.” Saraya said, “When I watched AJ, I’ve watched that over and over again, because she’s my fairy godmother. She was one that took me under her wing when I first came up on the roster, and we traveled together. My social media has blown up. I cannot go on there without hundreds of thousands of people doing videos being like, ‘Please bring Saraya back. Please bring Paige back.’ It made me emotional. People still like me, and they still want me to be around. That’s probably the best feeling in the world for me.”
Saraya admitted that the fan reaction made her reflect on her future in wrestling. She said, “I feel like I have done a lot for women’s wrestling. My career was cut short with the neck, but now my neck is healthy. I’m in full health. I want to start training again. I want to get in the ring and bring back the Paige that I was in NXT. I watched a match I had with Natty a couple of days ago, and I thought, man, I just miss that side of me. I need to get back in the swing of things again. So if I ever do come back…”
She went further, emphasizing that she is prepared to commit to training for a return. “I’m ready to come back. I want to get my cardio back and get the ring rust off. I found my love for it again. This is such an exciting time for wrestling, and I miss it. I want to be Paige again, like the way she wrestled in NXT, and I want to upgrade her. I’m not going to be crazy, but I want to do the new generation style of wrestling. If I ever come back, people are going to be surprised at what I can do. I’m going to credit Natty because I am coming to the Dungeon. I’m going to come there for a good month, and we are going to sweat.”
Saraya explained that while she knows what she has accomplished in wrestling, she still has moments of doubt. “I feel like I have done a lot for women’s wrestling. I do believe that. But everyone has a moment, a human moment, where you get in your head. Sometimes this world can be exhausting mentally, and you have insecurity. I know I’ve done a lot, and I know my career has been really great, but it was cut short with the neck. Now my neck is healthy. Now I’m in full health. I want to start training again and get back in the ring.”
Beyond her wrestling future, Saraya also detailed the process of writing her new book, Hell in Boots: Clawing My Way Through Nine Lives. She revealed that she initially worked with a ghostwriter but felt the draft did not reflect her voice. “I wanted it to feel like my diary,” she explained. “I was skeptical of a ghostwriter because I thought it wouldn’t sound like me. It took over a year, and when I read it, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t that she couldn’t write, but it didn’t sound authentic. There were stories that were complicated, things added that didn’t happen, and I said, this cannot go out. I had to start from scratch. My friend Taylor helped me write it, and it took another year. It was exhausting, mentally draining, like therapy sessions going over chapters. It was very emotional, especially the chapter with Fade to Black, because I had never talked about it before. If I was going to do a book, I had to tell everything. Once it was done, it was rewarding. I can’t believe it’s out there. It makes you feel vulnerable, but at least people are hearing it from me, not from someone on the internet who thinks they know me.”
Natalya praised the book for sounding like Saraya’s true voice, something Saraya said was her main goal. She reiterated that being authentic was more important than releasing a polished but impersonal story.
Saraya, who wrestled as Paige in WWE, made her main roster debut in 2014 by defeating AJ Lee for the Divas Championship on her first night. She quickly became one of the most popular figures in WWE’s women’s division before her in-ring career was cut short by neck injuries, leading to her retirement in 2018.
In 2022, she signed with AEW, making her debut at AEW Dynamite: Grand Slam. She later won the AEW Women’s World Championship at All In in London in 2023. As of now, she is a free agent.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Busted Open Radio with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
