During a recent episode of AEW Unrestricted, Aubrey Edwards spoke on not being signed by the WWE after appearing as a referee for the Mae Young Classic. Here’s what she had to say:
So Jessika Carr, who’s now on Smackdown, she was their first full-time female referee, she started reffing around the same time I did. She had been wrestling 10 years prior, but we had gotten in contact with a mutual friend of ours, Brutal Bob. We kind of touched based every now and then, see how we’re all doing. She’s watch my tape give me some feedback and whatnot. There’s not a lot of women in this business so we kind of have to all support each other.
It was right around June when she hit me up, they’re kind of looking for another lady ref for the Mae Young Classic, and she asked if I would be interested in coming in for a tryout. I’m like yeah, of course, please. So I did the tryout. It was in the Performance Center. I went out for a week. It was when NXT was still taped in advance. It was during an NXT taping week so I actually had a dark match. It was like three minutes bell-to-bell because that’s just what it is, and they apparently liked me enough that they had me do the Mae Young Classic which was another week at the Performance Center. That was early August, and then September, they had me back. We did a NXT live loop that weekend, so I did three cities in Florida on top of an in-Performance Center show getting all this information and knowledge.
It’s awesome. I’m a freaking baby, and I’m learning all of this stuff that people would just kill for. I ended up doing the Evolution PPV. I was on the outside doing the battle royal. So I’m like a year and half in and I’m doing a show with 12,000 people in New York. Sure it’s a battle royal and it’s eight minutes, and I’m barely on screen, but it’s the experience of it.
[I was] doing pretty much everything at that point and not getting signed. That was weird. Every company runs its own way, and I can’t fault someone for not hiring someone specifically. Maybe it’s just wrong time. Maybe I said something that offended somebody. I don’t know. Who knows right?
I know that I got a lot of really great information out of it. I got really amazing experiences out of it. Yeah, it kind of sucks because I’m putting all of this time into it. I’m taking time off work, and I just want someone to love me, hold me and tell me everything’s going to be OK. I’m like I don’t what I’m supposed to do. I guess I’m gonna be on the indies forever. OK guys, bye.
You can listen to the podcast HERE.
Credit: AEW Unrestricted. H/T WrestlingInc.