The new number one contender for the AAA Reina de Reinas Championship, Taya Valkyrie, joined Insight with Chris Van Vliet to talk about her year long stint with WWE as Franky Monet.
Taya Valkyrie described a good beginning to her WWE run between training and working with NXT agents on her character. It was only when NXT transitioned to NXT 2.0 did things begin to change.
“WrestleMania weekend came and Presley (her dog) debuted on NXT before me,” Taya 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.”
It was at this point that Taya Valkyrie, who was released from WWE in November, experienced the most confusing period she’s ever had in pro wrestling. This was saying something for Taya, given all the promotions she’s worked for over the years.
“It was just like the most confusing experience of like, my entire life,” Taya said. “And having worked, like I said, everywhere, I just left like ‘what is going on?’”
Taya was asked if this created a situation where herself and others then felt like they were walking on egg shells, especially when releases began to happen in August. She confirmed that was in fact the case.
“Everybody was,” Taya said. “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 out 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.”
