Saraya had a meteoric rise in WWE as Paige when she won the Divas Championship during her first appearance on Monday Night RAW.
All Elite Wrestling‘s Saraya was a recent guest on The Mark Hoke Show to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked about her RAW debut following WrestleMania 30, when she defeated AJ Lee for the Divas Championship, Saraya confessed that the moment gives her chills every time she thinks about it.
“It gives me chills every time,” Saraya admitted. “It’s really weird because recently, my boyfriend was getting tattooed in our house, and there was a couple from the UK that wasn’t familiar with wrestling. And she was like, ‘So what do you do?’ And I was like, ‘I’m just gonna show you Fighting With My Family real quick.’ So I just showed her the movie, and then by the end of it, it gets to that winning the Divas Championship, and it’s just you never get over that feeling.
“Because when you’re a wrestler when you’re young, especially back in the day, you didn’t have many places to go for wrestling. Now you have a wide spectrum of wrestling, and it’s awesome. But it was just WWE. WWE was like the pinnacle; this is where you made the money too. This is where you lived your dream. This is where you make money as a wrestler. And so, yeah, you were like, I want to be a WWE Diva. That’s all I wanted to be.
“So the fact that I managed to get there and win the Divas Championship on my first day, and they gave me the opportunity to do that. I couldn’t believe it. I was young. I was 21 years old, and then I won it again when I was 22 on my birthday. I was like they treated me wonderfully. And I just feel like it’s just really awesome that I got to do that. And I’ll never stop smiling, and it’s really weird that it’s been ten years like time flies. I didn’t realize how long time as you get older it goes so quickly. I’m like; It’s bananas.”
When asked how she found herself in that position so quickly, as she was still NXT Women’s Champion at the time, Saraya believes it was because the company thought she could make them money after her first t-shirt sold out instantly. The only caveat for her callup at the time was that Vince McMahon demanded that she had to wear the color purple.
“Dude, it gives me joy. I get chills every time. But I think it’s because Triple H was really wonderful with us in NXT,” Saraya said. “It was actually FCW, then he took over and renamed it NXT. Yeah, so I just won the NXT Women’s Championship, and it was the first-ever female match that was on the Network. Remember that? The [WWE] Network? And so we were the first-ever female and the first-ever pay-per-view that was on it, and then my t-shirt got released, which was the Think Again t-shirt that Triple H had made for me. And it sold out instantly like that just done it sold out.
“So I think they were just like, ‘Oh, she could make us money. Let’s bring her up on the main roster.’ Also, it was just something different. I feel like like there was only one of me down in NXT at the time, like the pale goth chick who wore a lot of black and studs and stuff like that. Now it’s the norm, and it’s really cool to see that there’s so many different alternative girls out there. But at the time like I was thinking about Lita when I was dressing like that. I was like, I love Lita, like that’s who inspired me to be myself, and my mother, of course, she’s crazy.
“But yeah, so I felt like it was like a different flavor of ice cream, and it was a shakeout that the division needed at the time too. It was Triple H who was the one that was pitching for me to go on the main roster. And Vince was like, ‘Fine, but she has to wear purple,’ and that was it. So I had to get my purple wrestling gear, and I slowly transitioned back into the black again eventually, and he didn’t notice a thing.”
READ MORE: Adam Cole And Britt Baker To Face Chris Jericho And Saraya On 5/31 AEW Dynamite
What do you make of Saraya’s comments? Can you believe her first Divas Championship win was a decade ago? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit The Mark Hoke Show with a link back to this article for the transcription.
