Saraya looks back on her first promo in AEW.
The former multi-time women’s champion appeared on today’s edition of Busted Open Radio, where she admitted to be a little rusty on the mic following her company debut at the Grand Slam Dynamite back in September.
I was so mortified by the promo myself that I actually second guessed coming back altogether. ‘Did I just make a mistake? Did I make myself look so awful?’ People like Dean Malenko was like, ‘You went out there, you said on the microphone that you were nervous.’ I really was. I was terrified. I have never been so terrified in my career. Even when I debuted, won different championships, I was terrified, but not as terrified as coming back after five years, going to a different company in front of a new group of fans, in front of all these people watching you and they want to see you fail or do good. There was a lot of eyes.
Saraya feels like she redeemed herself in a promo with Britt Baker, one that former three-time AEW champion Jon Moxley helped her out with.
I wanted to come across more, ‘is she a good guy or a bad guy too?’ Just the way I delivered it, it wasn’t my proudest promo I’ve done. If I had to own up a promo, which I ended up having with Britt, I had to redeem myself. Moxley helped out a lot with these promos. With that one, he was like, ‘Speak from the heart. Stop trying to plan a promo out in your head. Speak from experience and more personal’ without taking low blow jabs just, ‘I’m a star.’ Then it was, ‘who is the babyface and who is the heel’ with me and Britt. We decided it doesn’t matter, you don’t have to have a definitive babyface or heel.
One thing Saraya wishes she didn’t say was that “she finally had a boss who would listen to her in AEW,” adding that WWE was always good to her during her time there.
The one thing I do wish I didn’t say, I got asked to say a certain sentence, the sentence where I was like, ‘Finally, a boss that listens to me’ I wish I didn’t take that low hanging fruit. I’ve always spoke highly of WWE because they helped me a lot. I love AEW. There is no reason to take that low hanging fruit and I feel that caused a lot of tribalism and negative reaction. There are some things you wish you didn’t say, and that’s one of them. I feel it would have gone smoother if I wouldn’t have said that. I understand why people were made, ‘but I’m playing a character. Be quiet.’
Saraya currently leads the Outcasts in AEW.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)