WWE Denied Current AEW Star’s Release Requests For Months

AEW star Tay Conti has opened up about her departure from WWE and NXT, and the company not wanting to let her go.

Despite not using her prominently on TV, Conti suggests that WWE was adamant she’d be a star and didn’t want her to go to AEW.

This wasn’t reflected in how she was being used, so she requested her release, but only got it as part of the pandemic releases instead of when she’d actually requested it months earlier.

Speaking on AEW Unrestricted, Conti said:

“I was asking for my release for a couple months. I was not happy. I was so unhappy there that I didn’t have any plans. I was just like, I want to get out of here, I’m not happy, and I never thought about, oh, what am I gonna do if they give me my release? I never thought about it. I was like, I just need to be done with them, and of course, they said no a couple times. We were having a bunch of meetings. I was like, ‘Nope, I’m just done. Please let me go’. So at the last one, they told me, ‘No, you’re not going’ and they mentioned AEW.

“I remember they told me, ‘No, you’re not gonna go to AEW. We put a lot of money on you. You are star blah, blah, blah’. I’m like, ‘Yes, you guys don’t use me here. So I gotta go somewhere, but it’s not there. I know nobody there. I have no plans to go to AEW’. I had no plans because I had no contacts at all. At end of the day, we figured it out. They said no, and I still had two years in my contract. And I was like, well, what am I gonna do. I’m gonna be here. They told me, ‘Okay, you can be at home. We’re going to pay you. You can be at home’. I’m like, ‘No, because I know everybody’s going to forget about me, and I won’t be able to work’. And I was like, no, it’s okay. I’m going to make it two more years.

“I’m going to keep working, I have no choice right? We decided to keep working, and everything was good. We got in good terms, and then something had to change because I was not with training the schedule, whatever. I was back to work normally. Out of nowhere, they called me because of – I mean, not out of nowhere. Everybody knew was what was going on because of COVID, but I was not expecting the call since we were okay. They told me, ‘We are finally letting you go’ not in a really good, I don’t how to explain it without being too mean, they’re not too nice.”

The Brazilian star also spoke about what she learned in WWE, saying:

“Honestly, I learned a lot. First of all, I learned that I need to speak up when I’m not happy, not in a bad way but in a nice way. I was holding for so long, and I was accepting everything that people told me that hurt me and everything that I never said (anything). When I started talking, that’s when things were ugly there because when you speak up there, that’s when people are like, ‘Oh, why are you doing this? You should be quiet’. And I learned a lot about the business like how to be respectful. A lot of people there were really important to me to help me grow a lot.

“I remember people were saying, ‘Hey, you just got here. He has 10 years of experience. You get out of the chair and give him the chair’, and that’s how I learned. I was happy to do it because in judo, it’s the same thing. It’s a respect, and we have to respect people who have more experience than us. I gotta prove my worth here, and that’s what I’m going to do. That was hard because a couple of people were disrespectful, which is different, but I learned a lot. I learned how to love and respect the business. I feel that’s the most important thing for me that I learned there. I do love, and I do respect wrestling a lot.”

Conti has impressed throughout her time in AEW so far, having been in title matches with both NWA Champion Serena Deeb, and AEW Champion Hikaru Shida.

Quote via Wrestling Inc

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• Tay Conti
• AEW
• nxt
• wwe

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