Normally, when an athlete tears their ACL, they know it basically right away. They collapse onto the ground, limp to the sidelines, and have to be carried away with at least one of their compatriots there to help them.

For Sonya Deville, that was not her experience at all, as in an Insight interview with Chris Van Vliet, the 30-year-old grappler revealed that she actually thought she simply suffered a run-of-the-mill injury during the match and worked through the rest of the effort, including multiple comeback attempts, with her knee completely out of wack.

“I had no idea. I must be so naive to this. I've been an athlete, I was like, I'm fine. I tagged out. Alright, I'm lying. I knew something was wrong. It felt a little weird. I kind of like my knee buckled, and I was like, ‘Oh, that was weird.' But, like, I'm fine. I have eight minutes left in this match. We're about to go to a commercial break. I need to get it together. And so I tagged out to Chelsea, and I got on the apron. Luckily, we're in a commercial break. So I was like alright, let me suss out the situation. So I'm hopping on the apron, and anyone in the live audience was probably like, What the heck is she doing? But I'm hopping up in down on the apron trying to gauge if I can trust my knee. And sure enough, it was sketchy at best,” Sonya Deville explained via No DQ.

“I was like, ‘Oh God, well, I'm in a match with Bianca, Charlotte, Chelsea, it's a tag match, no less. I'm not about to change the entire match right now on live TV.' So I was getting the comeback run on me, and I had another eight minutes to wrestle. So I was like, we just got to do this. So Chelsea tagged me in for the hot tag. I had two comebacks ran on me. We did some falsies, I think a superplex. And the whole time, I was like, ‘Oh my God, I hope I don't fall flat on my face.' And sure enough, we made it to the end and I limped back, I got my rental car, went to my hotel, tried to pretend like it didn't happen, because in this business, no one wants to be injured and out of play. Because I just won my first title. I was so sad, I was like, It's fine. It's just a sprain, I'll wrap it. Long story short, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. And I fell face-first into the wall. And I was like, ‘Oh, I think something's wrong.'”

Asked if it hurt to tear her ACL, Deville said no, noting that while she was unable to work the match as usual, she actually didn't feel any pain at all in the moment.

“No pain. I swear. I know that sounds very weird. I've torn my ACL, and every ACL is different,” Deville explained. “We're not all created equal in that sense, but I didn't feel any pain. I just felt instability. And it wasn't even swollen. And then the doctor looked at the MRI, and he's like, your ACL has probably been torn for a long time.”

While Deville didn't feel any pain at the moment, she certainly did after, as losing the tag team titles felt like a crushing blow, as, after years of hard work, she was back to square one.

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Sonya Deville was devastated to lose her Women's Tag Team Title.

Later in her interview with Chris Van Vliet, Sonya Deville commented on having to hand over her tag team championship to Chelsea Green, who eventually replaced her with Piper Niven after a short talent search. How did it feel to lose something she worked very hard to achieve? For Deville, it was horrible, as after finally winning her first title, it was all too quickly taken away.

“I was so devastated. I mean, I'd been with the company for nine years. Of course, part of being in the WWE is to one day grab that brass ring and get gold around your waist and that's what I had been striving for, of course,” Sonya Deville explained. “So I finally got my first championship, and I was so happy. I was so elated. I was ready to make those titles mean more than ever before. [Then] The injury came, which is probably why I ran back to my hotel and hid in my room and didn't tell anyone I was injured.”

Fortunately for Deville, she's officially made her way back onto WWE television and while she hasn't reunited with Green, she is looking to manage the duo of Shayna Baszler and Zoey Stark as they look to pursue becoming the new WWE Women's Tag Team Champions. Will it work? Only time will tell, but it's safe to say Deville is happy to be back regardless.