Saraya Knight was the most recent guest on the Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia podcast. Knight has been an independent wrestler for nearly three decades and is also well known for being the mother of WWE SmackDown GM Paige. Knight’s life has been an incredible roller coaster journey of ups and downs, some of which will be documented in the 2019 film Fighting With My Family starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Knight opened up to host Lilian Garcia about what it was like to be there for her daughter Paige, when the WWE Superstar was sincerely contemplating suicide:
“There was many times when I was on the other end of the phone and to hear your little girl come out with those words when you gave them life and they voluntarily want to take it away. That’s the biggest gift you can give anybody is a reason to live and to actually give somebody the breath that they’re breathing. To hear the pain that you hear when your kids are broken is horrendous. What people have got to realize about Paige is that she’s human. People make mistakes. The only difference is her mistakes are on a larger page and there’s more people critical and wanting to jump on her. The child is human and I’ve spent many an hour, many a day, talking to her, being there for her, being in the background. Our whole family, all of us are always there for her; but, it is desperately sad that people know her as her character, but they don’t know her as Saraya Jade and to me she is Saraya Jade. Some of this stuff I see and I read and stuff she’s gone through. The trolls, they’re so evil and it’s hard. It’s extremely hard when your child is broken, especially when you’re 4000 miles away.
Knight opened up about how she was able to handle her daughter’s struggles:
I was a wreck. I’m not ashamed to tell you that when your child goes through something as a mother you go through it too. You feel every emotion. You see it.
Knight talked about Paige having the family’s fighting spirit; but, also acknowledge her daughter’s limits:
“She has a limit. When she gets to that overload, she does suffer panic attacks. She is over critical of herself. She’s a council house girl that’s done good. We never came into money. We never had money. We’ve always lived by our means. We’ve gone out. She’s put rings up. She’s done all the crappy jobs to get where she is today. She’s a normal everyday girl and mistakes will be made because we’re not all perfect and to go from one extreme to another, there’s always gonna be big mistakes made; but, it’s people being over critical is what affects Paige more than anything. Why are they saying that? I don’t understand why they’re saying that and she’s just so critical of herself. She’ll bounce through. Whatever she does she’ll bounce through
Knight opened up about what it was like when Paige’s in-ring career came to an end:
She actually rang us when she came out of the doctors, when she had just found out the news and she was snot bubbling everywhere. The girl was devastated. You’ve to to remember she hasn’t known anything else. She doesn’t know anything else. She never had a normal job. She could do a normal job. My God, she’d be running the place in two days. She’s a go-getter. She was like, ‘I need to speak to my dad,’ because obviously she’s a bit of a dad’s girl. Rick [Paige’s father] sat with her and kind of said to her, ‘Look girl, I’ve always said there’s more to life than wrestling for you.’ Even though wrestling is his life, he always knew she was meant to be something more, something big, something great. Once I spoke to Raya myself, I was like, ‘Girl, let’s see what happens. Never say never. Let’s just take it stages at a time and get the operation done and then take it from there.’ Obviously I’m rattled and then it’s like, ‘Mom, Dad I’ve got to retire.’ I think we knew about 2-3 months beforehand and it was hell, absolute hell. Obviously she went through the transition then and we had to keep quiet, so she was ringing us up on her bad days after she’d been done…certainly not allowed in the ring….she wasn’t allowed to do certain stuff anymore and then she had to rest and she wasn’t allowed to be anywhere near it because she had to heal. She went stir crazy, absolutely completely and utterly stir crazy because she just wanted so desperately to get back into the ring. Then when it finally came that she was going to be doing the Monday Night RAW segment, myself and my husband, we were good until the tear came. As soon as that tear rolled down her face we were just blubs. We were just sniveling idiots.
Knight expressed a great amount of gratitude to the WWE for being a second family to Paige during such an extremely difficult time. She also opened up about some tumultuous and deeply disturbing times in her own life.
(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone)
We’ve got even more about the interview on the next page.
