Taya Valkyrie (formerly known as Franky Monet) was released in November and has now spoken out about her confusing and brief time in WWE.
Recently making her triumphant AAA return to challenge for her previously vacated Reina de Reina’s Championship, Taya Valkyrie formerly known as Franky Monet in WWE, opened up to Chris Van Vilet about the confusing transition behind the scenes from NXT to NXT 2.0.
Speaking about debuting with NXT after many years of experience in the wrestling industry, Valkyrie said:
“Everything was good. Like, it was hard, it was definitely like ‘okay, this is a totally different kind of situation than I’ve ever had or been in before, but if I survived all the drills and all the hours I’ve spent in this kind of environment in the other places, I’m sure I can do it here.’
“And that’s what I did. I did abs, I went extra ring time, I was training every day, I was doing promo classes, I was pitching ideas and having creative meetings. Road Dogg and I would sit down and talk about stuff for like, hours and I would just, I would have all these, I would have color charts. I would have movie references. I think about this stuff so much because I just care and I just love it so much. So things were like, really good. And you know, as you can see what happened, things changed as time went on and then 2.0 came about and I feel like that is when a really big change happened.”
Commenting on the overall mood behind the scenes and asked if it felt as though people were walking on eggshells, Taya agreed, saying:
“I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I can also say that the energy definitely shifted. You know, we were hearing rumors all the time about ‘they’re going to be firing people this week.’ And then the whole week everyone’s like, you know, scared basically. I don’t know how else to say it. But we’re all busting our asses, you know what I mean? Like, everybody is there.
“I ended up training with Corino and the boys in the tag class and I love training with MSK and training with Imperium and all those guys because they’re pushing me and making me do different stuff. Like, just learning from different people in different walks of life and different paths and everything was like, good. Everyone was working really, really hard, but it’s just, the shift of how they wanted 2.0 literally changed from like, one day to the next. So I feel like it just made everybody be like ‘oh my’, like holding your breath almost.”
This past weekend Valkyrie not only competed in Mexico for AAA but returned to Portland, Oregon for Prestige’s Roseland 2 show which featured her in an unsanctioned, anything goes match where she lost to Drexl after an attack from Athena (formerly known as Ember Moon) setting up their feud for an upcoming Prestige show in April.
Transcription via WrestlingINC
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