Taya Valkyrie comments on potentially returning to WWE.
Valkyrie, a former IMPACT Knockouts Champion, signed with WWE in February 2021. After she spent a few months in NXT, she was released in a wave of cuts in November that same year. Since then, she has been competing for a number of companies, including IMPACT Wrestling, MLW, NWA, and Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide.
In an interview with Denise Salcedo, Valkyrie was asked about potentially returning to WWE. She stated that she didn’t want to say never, but she admitted that she was hired at the worst time possible the first time around. She noted that she wondered what could have happened if the situation turned out differently, but moving forward, she emphasized that you never know what will happen in the wrestling world. Valkyrie also made it clear that she focuses on what she can control.
“I mean, we obviously have talked about it and I’ve been asked this several times,” Valkyrie said. “You never want to say never like I said, I just don’t know, you know what I mean? I feel like yeah, I was put…I was hired at literally the worst time possible. That’s all I can say, it was just like, all the cards were stacked against me, because the world was basically on fire and things were just not going well for everybody.
“It just sucks because I’m like, ‘Oh my God’, and then there’s the what ifs? Like, what if I’d been hired a year later? What if I’d done this? You know, all this kind of stuff, but you can’t, that will just make you drive yourself crazy. So I don’t know, it’s just, we’ll see, the wrestling world is so strange and bizarre, and things happen from one day to the next. All I know is I work very hard. I’ve earned my spot. I’ve been doing this for a long time, my work speaks for itself, and that’s all I can control.”
Valkyrie also described how she, like many others, has enjoyed the “open door” policy seen throughout the wrestling industry these days, as even performers who compete on TV are allowed to work for other companies. She noted that this dynamic may shift at some point, and wrestlers will have to pick a team. Valkyrie stated that there are plenty of opportunities all over the place, and wrestlers can also make a good living on the independent scene now.
“I think that it’s definitely different now, just because of how the open door kind of policy has worked, for people being able to go anywhere,” Valkyrie said. “Do I think that that’s probably going to change? Yeah, I think that eventually, it’s going to shift the other way, and we’re going to have to be, you know, picking one team to play for kind of thing, but that’s okay. There’s just opportunities with IMPACT, WWE, with AEW, all these, MLW as well, has signed talent for people to make money.
“I think a lot of times beforehand, it was like, get to a big company, because that’s where you’re finally going to actually be able to have a salary, grow your credit, all this kind of stuff that, you know, you have to face as an adult. Now it’s, you can make really good money on your own, you don’t necessarily need that. So it’s nice to see that, and I’m happy to see everybody thriving. You’re seeing more and more of these independent men and women all over the place, just killing it, and living their lives and wrestling wherever and being able to have a great life.”
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