Over the past few weeks, Saraya has constantly been revealing undisclosed stories of her personal life given that an open book has already hit the market, sketching her journey. Named, Hell in Boots: Clawing My Way Through Nine Lives, the memoir based on the former WWE Superstar’s life has already become a best-seller as people got to relate with her downtime.
One such phase had come in her life upon announcing her retirement from the WWE in-ring competition back in 2018. A neck injury took her professional wrestling career away, leading to a tough battle with addiction during her days in the company. After leaving AEW recently, she’s now opened up about those hard times that almost didn’t offer her a second chance in wrestling.
Speaking about her problems in life on the Lightweights Podcast, Saraya remembered how she was seen in online news for all the negative reasons while staying away from WWE television. Sitting far away from her home country of United Kingdom, she realized that it was great for her to leave addiction to become better, both physically and mentally.
“It was a personal decision, because I was drinking and doing drugs, and it wasn’t good for me,” Saraya admitted. “I was a menace, I was constantly online doing controversial s***, I was fighting, I was just doing some crazy s***.” She added, “So it was good for me not to drink. And it became an addiction too, and it’s not good.”
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Fans do remember a scary moment from Saraya’s WWE career when she got hurt during a match with Sasha Banks in 2016 after which she was never cleared for in-ring action. Not being able to wrestle, the former-Paige was seemingly lost in life and career. This is when WWE stepped in to help her by offering her a role on television in a non-wrestling capacity.
“I had already started getting sober with the help of WWE, and then six weeks into me coming back from my first injury… I was like, I can either hit rock bottom again, or I can try something different,” she further explained. “That’s when WWE came to me and asked me about being GM, and I loved that idea.” (quotes courtesy Wrestling INC)
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The night after Wrestlemania 34 witnessed Saraya announcing to the world about her incapability in wrestling matches inside the squared circle. Just five days later, she was named the Smackdown general manager and the WWE Universe was happy to have her back on regular television schedule. With All Elite Wrestling in the rear-view, she would love to come back to the WWE at some point with Triple H being in charge of the company’s creative aspects.