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As crazy as it may sound, as she doesn't even turn 31 until August, it has almost been a decade since Saraya made her on-screen WWE debut, winning the Divas Championship off of AJ Lee on the April, 7th, 2014 edition of Monday Night RAW.
Since then, the performer formerly known as Paige had her career almost ended due to a neck injury, spent time managing other wrestlers and brands on WWE and ultimately jumped ship to AEW, where she made her long-awaited return to the ring at the Prudential Center for a match with Dr. Britt Baker DMD.
Sitting down for an interview with Adrian Hernandez, Saraya was asked about how she has grown since making her debut in WWE all of those years ago, and how the industry has grown around her. In the opinion of Saraya, it took a ton of courage to challenge the status quo, but things have gotten increasingly better as a result of those efforts.
“Beginning of WWE, it was very hard. You’re very job scared all the time. You feel like you can’t use your voice a lot of the time as a female in the company. It was very difficult a lot of times to get what you wanted and do what you wanted to do. It was really frustrating,” Saraya said via Fightful.
“At one point, we said, ‘F that.’ Me, the Garcia twins, and Emma took a stand at one point and were like, ‘we’re going to take control.’ They had us do a certain amount of time, and then they cut the time, so we only had four minutes when it was with entrances, exit, and the match. You can’t tell a story. There’s no point. It’s a three-hour show, you can’t give us more than four minutes? It’s ridiculous. Why are the women the ones who get cut? We were like, ‘we put butts in seats too; people come watch us.’ We went out and did two minutes. We were like, ‘f**k this, we’re not here to get our time wasted, so we’re going to waste your time instead.’ Went in there, did a couple of strikes and a roll-up, and got the heck out. Once we got backstage, it was, ‘What the f**k, you had so much time left.’ ‘So, we don’t care.’ It’s crappy.”
Wow, purposefully cutting a match short because another match went long? That's certainly one way to handle things. Fortunately, fans don't have to watch statement matches like that anymore, as, in the opinion of Saraya, things have improved considerably for women in the industry.
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Saraya is happy to see the evolution of female confidence in WWE.
Expanding on her thoughts, Saraya noted the times she would see female performers get their matches cut from WrestleMania for no real reason other than that a male act on the card took up more time for one reason or another.
Fortunately, through hard work from herself and performers like Beckly Lynch and Bayley who came after her, things have generally gotten better for female Superstars in WWE and beyond, with “The Showcase of the Immortals” having been headlined by women on multiple occasions.
“I’ve seen girls, they were crying because their WrestleMania moment got taken away and that show is even longer,” Saraya continued. “That’s a whole day event. Now it’s two days, but one day was really long. The girls are the ones who get cut because a guy went over time or someone wanted extra time or whatever it was, and the girls get cut, and they’re devasted. They got all the gear made, all the money, time, and energy into the match for them to be completely cut out. It’s bulls**t. It’s awesome when you see girls nowadays use their voices and taking a stand and being like, ‘f**k you, I can do whatever I want to do, and I don’t need you.’”
With All In 2023 right around the corner, Saraya will soon be afforded a chance to wrestle in front of one of the biggest crowds of her career back in her native England. It's safe to say she will do “whatever she wants” at that event, too, even if her current idea, involving the crowd chanting a not-so-nice word across Pay-Per-Views, may not be the lasting image Tony Khan wants people to remember from the first wrestling show to clear 60,000 ticket sales at Wimbley Stadium this century. *sigh* oh well, that's the beauty of giving performers freedom: they can do with it as they see fit.
