A.Q.A, who was known as Zayda Ramier in NXT, recently spoke on her release from WWE.
With her last match on NXT being last June in a tag team bout, she was released with several other superstars on Nov. 4. While speaking with Ella Jay on “A Wrestling Gal” podcast, A.Q.A details what led up to her release and confirms that she was medically disqualified to continue in the ring. You can read more on that by clicking here.
While talking about her release, A.Q.A discussed a lot of fun ideas that were being brought about for her in NXT. These include working a storyline with Sarray and winning the NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles with Ember Moon. The tag title win would eventually break off into the team feuding with each other down the line.
“There was some plans for me that just irks me. Literally, the week that I got pulled, the next week, my plans were supposed to take off. So there was like a whole — I was supposed to do a program with Sarray. I was supposed to do a program with — it was supposed to be me and Ember [Moon]. We were gonna become tag champs and then end up — she turns heel and we end up feuding with one another. It was just a bunch of cool stuff that they were coming up with. They were like, ‘Oh, we have all these ideas’ and then they kind of just [went away]. I was like, ‘Oh no!’ But I’m not angry at anything. I had a great experience, my coaches were great, medical staff was great. Like I said, no one made a mistake, no one made a bad call. It was just everyone being overly cautious and it was just like, ‘Okay, for the safety of you, let’s just take you out now then let’s see what happens later on in the future’ because it was made known to me, a lot, by some very important people like, ‘We want you back and we’ll have you back when we can have you back but you know, figure this out first.’” [h/t – POST Wrestling]
She was medically disqualified in October and they even attempted to have her do other things for the company outside the ring. These opportunities included being an interviewer, commentary, and ring announcer.
“Even after I was [medically] disqualified on October 5th, the last two or three weeks of the month, they gave me a bunch of opportunities. They let me audition to be an interviewer, they let me audition for commentary. They let me audition for ring announcing, they let me audition for a bunch of stuff and we were coming up with a bunch of plans for me to be an on-screen character.”
She continues, “One of the plans, it was never set in stone but just thrown around between me and like two or three people on creative was like me and William Regal, we’re gonna be on-screen characters and I was so excited about that because I was like, ‘Ah! I get to work with William Regal.’ But you know, that didn’t end up happening and but you know, they gave me a chance because they realized what I could do. Like I said, I had stepped up in my promos and everything like that and they saw the character that I was becoming and so they were like, ‘We can use this some way on NXT.’ But, it came down to like, at the end of the day, I was here to wrestle, not do the extracurricular stuff so, that’s why all those ideas ended up being turned down but, no, there wasn’t anything bad. No bad experience.”
Despite the ideas presented that never panned out, A.Q.A admits she wasn’t ready in the long run. She explains that she didn’t have the confidence in herself.
“So that was my road to release [from WWE]. It wasn’t a bad road. It was just, in that time — oh, that’s what else, you were talking about what I learned. I see the good and bad in it because honestly when they were getting ready to skyrocket me off, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t, at all. I didn’t have the confidence in myself. If I was there right now and then they told me, ‘Oh yeah, we got plans to do X, Y, Z,’ I’d be like, ‘Let’s go.’ But at the time, I wasn’t — I was easily stressed out about a lot of stuff. I didn’t — like I said, still trying to figure out who Zayda [Ramier] was and who I was and I wouldn’t have been ready so, it was a really big blessing in disguise, even though the outcome of it was unfortunate, it was a really big blessing in disguise because during that time I was out from July on down, it really gave me a chance to figure out what I wanted, both in my career and in life. ‘Do I always wanna be sitting here with these anxieties? Do I always wanna be sitting here with no confidence? Everyone else believing in me more than I — do I want that? No.’”
You can listen to the full interview by clicking the link below.
