Paige Details How WWE WrestleMania 42 Return Came About & Meeting With Nick Khan, ‘Two Things: Your Neck Needs To Be Ok & We Have To Do A Drug Test’

WWE

Paige has detailed the chain of events which led to her making her return to WWE in-ring action for the first time in over eight years at WrestleMania 42.

One of the biggest highlights of WrestleMania 42 weekend came on Night One of “The Grandest Stage of Them All,” when former two-time WWE Divas Champion Paige returned to replace the injured Nikki Bella as Brie Bella’s tag team partner in the WWE Women’s Tag Team Title four-way.

Appearing as a guest on What’s Your Story? With Steph McMahon, Paige detailed the chain of events which led to her return, which all started with an appearance on the podcast of Jelly Roll’s wife Bunnie X0.

Paige recalled:

“Let me tell you the story of how it came to be because it involves Jelly (Roll) and Bunnie (Xo). One of my best friends is Bunnie, I love that woman so much, we are very very close. She was doing her book tour, she was doing her live podcast, she was in LA so she text me and was like, ‘Can you come on?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ So I get there and her manager comes and gets me and she’s like, ‘You’ve got a friend in there.’ I was like, ‘Who?’ And I go down there and it’s Brad Slater, so that’s Dwayne’s (The Rock) agent.

“I’ve known him for over 10 years because of Fighting With my Family and stuff, great guy, always checks in on me every six months, I’ll get a text from him. So he was in there and he’s like, ‘It’s so great to see you,’ gives me a big hug and then Jelly was like, ‘What the f**k. When are you gonna bring it back? Give a call to your guy.’ And Brad was like, ‘Do you want to come back?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I would love to come back.’ And then he was like, alright let me make a call.”

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Paige then detailed her meeting with WWE President Nick Khan, and the two requests he made of her before negotiating her return:

“So he calls Nick (Khan) and within 30 minutes Nick had said, ‘Sure, let’s get a meeting with her.’ So a week later he flies to LA to the WWE offices there, I went and met him for like 10 minutes. Great guy, love him, big fan of him. Super smart oh my gosh, he’s got a business brain on him. I thought I’d be intimidated by him but he’s easy going.

“He goes, ‘Two things: your neck needs to be ok and we have to do a drug test.’ I was like, ‘Fair enough, hey I can control the drug test I’m clean as a whistle. I don’t know how my neck’s been, it’s been a few years since I got it checked, last time I got it checked it was perfect so I’m not really concerned about it.

“The next week I fly to Birmingham, Nikki (Bella) was there getting her ankle done at the same time. That’s super weird, I was like, ‘What the heck.’ It was perfect timing. So I was at the doctor there from like 5:45am till 3 or 4 in the afternoon doing all these tests because you guys need to be thorough, make sure my neck is perfect. And at one point I thought something was wrong because all the doctors were around the screen, calling other doctors. I was like, ‘Something’s happening, they’re not gonna let me go back.’ And I’m exhausted sitting there, and he comes in and he’s like, ‘You ready to go home kid?’ I bawled my eyes out. I cried my eyes out.

Paige would then explain exactly what made her so emotional upon hearing the news that she was cleared, also revealing that she sent WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H a voice note once she was told:

“It was a couple things, the fact that my neck was good, the last time I was in WWE my neck wasn’t and I had to retire and I had to miss out on all these massive things like the Royal Rumble, Elimination Chamber all these things I didn’t get to be a part of even though I was a part of the group that helped kind of ignite that. And it’s just the fact that I’m gonna be ok, I was like, ‘Wow, my neck is good. I’m happy, I’m healthy, everything’s going right.’ So I was bawling my eyes out, hugging the doctors and I sent Hunter a voice note saying, ‘I’m cleared, you can’t get rid of me!’

“I do the blood, peed a little bit too, got all that out the way. And then for some reason I had in my head like, ‘What if I ate something? Like a poppy seed or something. I hadn’t even taken Ibuprofen, I was so worried about any kind of medicinal stuff, pharmaceutical stuff… Anyway I was fine, they were like, ‘You’re good, calm down kind of thing.’ So yeah I was completely cleared, and then it kinda went into negotiations and that was on Monday, we were getting all that done and then this weekend was obviously Mania so it was a quick turnaround.”

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Making Paige’s return even sweeter was the fact that she and Brie also picked up the win, dethroning The Irresistible Forces (Nia Jax & Lash Legend) as WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions.

The following night on the Raw after WrestleMania 42, Paige and The Bella Twins were shown in the crowd at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

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• wwe
• WrestleMania
• paige
• Nick Khan
• WrestleMania 42

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