Daria Rae Berenato, formerly known as Sonya Deville in WWE, recently appeared as a guest on the wildly popular INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the women’s wrestling and combat sports star spoke about her WWE release, if she has retired from wrestling, possibly returning to MMA, the scary home break-in and stalker situation she dealt with, as well as shaving her head bald.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where she touches on these topics with her thoughts. Check out the complete video archive of the discussion below as well.
On her WWE contract not being renewed: “I’m not one to sit in things and sulk. It’s very hard for me to do that, I think, because I want to be doing stuff all the time. I have a high work ethic and work rate, and so there was no part of me that was going to sit home and cry about not getting my contract renewed. I have my family, I have my stepdaughters and my wife at home, I have so much I want to do. I have a legacy that I still want to leave. As much as I’m proud of the work I did in WWE, I very much feel like I’m just getting started in my footprint that I want to leave in this world. So I was excited. I was like, wow, now I get to go pursue those things, because I wouldn’t have left the safety net of the company. I had a steady paycheck coming in. I loved everybody there, I loved what I was doing, so I wouldn’t have left. But I think it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
On whether anything could have happened to lead to the contract being renewed: “I can’t even comprehend thinking of it like that, because it’s so serendipitous and it happened so beautifully like that chapter closed, and now I’m doing all these things that I’ve wanted to do since I was 12 years old. So I can’t even look at it like that, my brain won’t let me, so maybe? I don’t know. I was training my ass off. I was always on point with my look and my character work. So I think it was just time. I will say transparently that I was feeling like I was in a rut for the past few years of my career there, I felt a little like I needed a change of pace, and I didn’t know what it was. I never would have left on my own merit, but I felt a little bit like I was in a loop, kind of in Purgatory, like I wanted an opportunity. I got the title with Chelsea finally, then the injury, got back from the injury, was finally getting my footing again in the ring after coming back from the ACL [tear], and then I got released. So it’s hard to look back and regret any of it, though, because I really feel like everything happens for a reason.”
On how long it took to process: “To be completely honest, I probably haven’t processed it because, like you said, I was right on to the next [thing]. I didn’t sit and sulk or really feel it that much. I’ll have moments where I’m like, wow. Being a WWE superstar became my identity. I was Daria, the WWE superstar, in my personal life, to my family, to my friends, like that was my identity. Probably because I started when I was 21 it was who I was. So that like mindset took a minute to get rid of. Now, you know, when I talk to people and they’re like, What do you do? It’s so weird to not say I wrestle for WWE.”
On whether she has retired from wrestling: “Definitely for now. Never say never. But right now I feel at peace with that. I’m not gonna lie, and I haven’t said this, but it almost is like an open wound, and if I think about wrestling somewhere else, it’s like I was so loyal to the company, it was my only home from 21 years old to 31. I’m a ride or die type of person in general. So it’s weird to even think about doing that, but not there.”
On possibly returning to MMA: “I can’t say no, because it has such a spot in my heart, but I will say acting feels more true to what I want in this very moment. I do think Bare Knuckle is badass. So yeah, I can’t say never. I have a really great relationship with Invicta and Shannon Knapp, the owner of Invicta, which is the only long standing all female MMA promotion. So I’ve been doing a lot of fun stuff with them. I will say being around the girls and being like in that atmosphere again gives me some crazy nostalgia. [Are you training again?] I will be training while I’m out here. I will say that, yeah, I am training. The only time I trained MMA in New Jersey was when I first started when I was 15.”
On the scary home break in: “Well, it’s funny because me and Mandy [Rose] are sitting on the front lawn being interviewed by the police. Then once we were done, they were like, ‘Why don’t you take some stuff that you need and go find somewhere else to stay, because it’s a crime scene now.’ It was insane. So I’m like, okay. So me and Mandy went in, and I packed a bag, and then we talked to WWE, and they were great. They were like, we’ll book you a hotel. I was like, I want to sleep in my bed. I was under the impression that I would be right back in that house. Then nightfall came, and we ran back there for something and I couldn’t even open the front door. It took me by surprise, because earlier that day when my adrenaline was high and I was still probably in fight or flight mode, I was under the impression I would go right back to my house as soon as the caution tape was down. Then yeah, nightfall came and I couldn’t even go in my front door. It was too close to home.”
On the situation potentially being much worse: “I’m the luckiest person on the planet. I tell people all the time, and when I retell the story, people often have the opinion of, ‘Wow, you got really lucky.’ Because if one thing went differently, me, or Mandy, or both of us would not be here right now.”
On the night of the break in: “So I had responded back to him on my ex’s account, saying, ‘You have the wrong address, idiot.’ Because I was so scared that this guy was going to show up at her house and try to hurt her. But by doing that, I let him know that he had the wrong address. So when he broke in two months later, it was to my address, and Mandy slept over that night. We were filming in Tampa or Orlando at the time, it is during the pandemic. So Mandy slept over and we went out to dinner, we went to Ocean Prime, we had a great night. We come back to my house and we’re watching Bates Motel on the couch, which was not the greatest show to be watching right before that, but we’re just hanging and Mandy fell asleep on the couch. It was like 1 am or something like that, and I was dozing off on the couch. I was about to just let us both sleep on the couch, because it was a very comfy couch, and we were so tired. I was like, no, let me wake Mandy up and tell her to go to the guest bedroom. I went to my bedroom. Thank God. I grab my phone, as I’m falling asleep, I turn on the alarm system from my phone. I throw my phone on the bed, and it was pitch black. 2:43 am I think it was, I hear my alarm system going off, and I’m like, What the f*ck now? My room’s pitch black. My phone is somewhere in the bed and I can’t find it. I’m freaking out. So I get up and I run to the alarm panel on the wall outside of my room, and it says, living room door open. So my immediate thought was, Mandy must have went outside. She must have not thought I set the alarm. Maybe her boyfriend called or something, and she ran outside. So I run into her room, and she’s f*cking dead asleep, and I’m like, Okay, well, if Mandy’s not outside, and it says, living room door open, what the f*ck is going on? So I started screaming. I’m like, ‘Mandy, get up!’ She’s like, coming to and she’s like, ‘What?’ I’m like, ‘Stay there!’ So I leave her there because it’s the back of the house, and I run to the living room by myself. I turn on all the lights, and my blinds are drawn over the two sliding glass doors, so I don’t know which one’s open. There’s two different doors. They’re kind of perpendicular. So I’m like, f*ck. Well, let me check the one that I always use, that’s probably the one that’s open. So I go to the small one, and I peel back the curtain, and the door shut, but I’m just checking the lock. It’s locked. Sorry I missed a part. When I’m going to check the lock, I look up and the man is standing right at the door, as close as you are to me right now. So he has a black mask on, a black backpack, all black clothes. I’m looking at him, and I scream. ‘What the f*ck do you want?’ At first you’re thinking did a neighbor lose its dog? Then I see the mask, and I’m like, something’s off. Then he advances towards the door, and if it was a burglar, it was a robbery, alarms going off, the homeowners there, you would run, right? You don’t want to get caught. I’m like, Well, it can’t be a robbery. So as soon as he advances, I run to grab Mandy to tell her ‘Holy sh*t, there’s someone in the house.’ We run out the garage door next to Mandy’s bedroom and take off in her car that was parked behind my car.”
On if she called the police: “The ADT system called the cops automatically, but we also did call the cops, they were there within like three minutes. So we circled around the neighborhood, and then we saw the cop cars come, but they came in lights off, sirens off, quiet. Now, I don’t know where this guy is at the time. The whole time I’m running to Mandy’s room and out the garage door, I’m waiting to get hit over the back of the head with a bat or something, I don’t know what’s happening. Well, what actually happened was when I ran he already had the other door open, but he had a little blind spot when he had to cross through the curtain. So he thought I ran up the staircase, but I ran behind the staircase to Mandy’s room and out the garage. So when the cops got there two minutes later, he was waiting at the bottom of staircase with a knife in one hand, pepper spray in the other hand, looking up, and they f*cking tackled him and got him out. So when they asked him, ‘Why were you waiting at the bottom of the staircase?’ His response was, ‘I thought she went up there, and I know she has MMA training, and I didn’t want to get my ass kicked, so I was gonna wait till she came down and pepper spray her.’ So like this whole thing’s unfolding, I’m still not understanding what’s happening. So the cops come up to me, and they’re like, ‘What do you do? Who are you?’ Because they didn’t know anything about wrestling. It’s like, ‘Oh, I wrestle.’ [They ask] ‘Do you know this guy? He’s saying he knows you.’ And I’m like, No. [They say] ‘Well, he says he messages you on Instagram.’ So they’re having me look up his name, and then I find his messages, and it’s like four years worth of obviously unresponded to scary DMs, all the way to the extent the last message was that night when he was on my patio and it said, ‘I’m here, baby girl, I’m finally here. Look outside.’ While me and Mandy are watching Bates Motel He said, Look outside, baby. He’s watching us through the blinds. So, you can’t really see out, but you can see in kind of gimmick, he’s watching us through the blinds watching TV. If one thing happened differently, like, had we slept on the couch? He had the door open, the doors right behind the couch. We would have both been maced before we could even wake up. Had I not set my alarm that night because I was being lazy and just went to sleep, which I’ve done many nights, we would be dead. Like one different move in any scenario, we wouldn’t have made it.”
On escaping serious harm: “I’m very grateful. I’m very lucky, and I think about it all the time. I often feel bad for victims of stalking that don’t have that ending, because some people, stalking is a serious issue in the United States, specifically, where these women specifically are hounded and stalked by these people for years, but if they don’t cross a certain legal threshold, you can’t get them detained. So they’re leaving stuff in their mailbox, they’re showing up at their front door. You’ve heard the stories even with other women wrestlers, but you can’t do anything about it unless, I know it’s weird to say, but like him breaking into my home and actually attempting something allowed me to put him in prison for 15 years.”
On the head-shaving storyline with Mandy Rose: “Bruce Pritchard pitched it to me, and he’s like, we’re gonna do hair versus hair. You and Mandy, you’re gonna shave your head. You’re gonna turn into this GI Jane character, and you’re gonna just plow through the division.”
On how she felt about shaving her head: “I was scared. I just didn’t want to be ugly. I was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna look like with no hair. This is before AI was that big, but I was using this editing software to edit a bald head on myself, and it was all very traumatizing, but I was down. I told him, yes, let’s go. Let’s do it.”
