Fallon Henley ‘Almost Said No’ To WWE After Personal Tragedy

WWE

Fallon Henley has revealed she “almost said no” to WWE following the loss of the first of two of her sister in 2021.

After almost five years in WWE NXT, and a further four years competing on the indies before that, Fallon Henley can now call herself a member of the Friday Night SmackDown roster, with herself and Fatal Influence stablemates Jacy Jayne and Lainey Reid being called up to the main roster during the SmackDown after WrestleMania 42.

With Henley and her stablemates looking set for big things on the blue brand, the 31-year-old has revealed that her entire WWE journey could have quite easily not become a reality if she had made a different choice back in 2021.

Speaking with Cody Rhodes on the latest episode of What’s Your Story? Henley opened up about the loss of her twin sisters Heather and Heidi, with the first loss almost leading her to decide against taking up an opportunity to do extra work for WWE in 2021 – which in-turn led Henley to her third tryout match and eventually being signed by the company off the back of that.

Henley recalled:

“Kind of crazy, kind of happened out of nowhere. I have twin sisters who are no longer with us. The first one passed during that year. That was right before I got the call to do the extra work that got me my third tryout match with Elektra (Lopez).

“It was a really hard time, like I said it kind of came out of nowhere. All her organs shut down, she got rushed to the hospital and before we knew it she was gone.

“She left behind her two daughters that were still living with her and her son. They had lost their dad, I wanna say a year or two before then, so they have had a very, very hard beginning of life. But I was over in Tampa, and that’s where they had been living at the time and the only options they really had were to go to Michigan to be with my mom, go to California to be with one of my other sisters or come and stay with me.

“I had a two bedroom apartment at the time, I brought them in. They shared one of the rooms, I took the smaller one. I think they were like 16 and 17, so, one still had to finish high school and the other one was just starting college.

“So kind of a big change for, what was I at the time? 22 or something. Taking in these two teenage girls who for my sake were extremely well behaved and mature given the life they had gone through and the hardships they had gone through.

“So when I got that call to do the extra work, I mentally was not in a place where I thought I could do it. And I almost said no, and had I said no, I wouldn’t be here right now, I wouldn’t be on SmackDown doing any of the things that I’m doing.

“And I feel like that was a little part of my sister kicking me and telling me to go do it, because she knew how much I wanted this and she was probably, Heather and Heidi were the twins and they were probably my biggest supporters ever. So a lot of what I’m working for now is for them.”

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Cody Rhodes would then ask how her sister’s two daughters are doing now, and what they think of Fallon’s WWE career, to which she replied:

“They’re doing amazing. The younger one Tabby she just started a full-time job actually taking one of my sisters full-time jobs that she had had. So she kind of stepped into her shoes for that role. And then the older one Julia is now in nursing school.

“They’re head over heels for me. They were with me for a lot of my journey up until that point so, they’d seen how hard I’d been working doing other extra work and on the indies and things like that, so when I was finally able to get there we were all just happy.”

If you use this transcription or any portion of it please credit WrestleTalk.com and link to this page.

Henley had her tryout match with Elektra Lopez in September 2021 under the name Anna Scheer, before returning as Fallon Henley in the last month of 2021.

During her time in WWE NXT she won the NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles with Kiana James, the NXT Women’s North American Title and the WWE Women’s Speed Championship.

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