Ex‑WWE Star Suffered Bad Depression During Rocky NXT Run

A former WWE superstar admitted that she went through bad depression while working in NXT.

Gigi Dolin was hired by WWE in early 2021 after a successful run in the independent wrestling scene as Priscilla Kelly. Dolin became a featured star in the women’s division later that year and was part of the very successful Toxic Attraction group with Mandy Rose and Jacy Jayne.

As a tag team, Dolin and Jayne held the NXT Women’s Tag Team Titles twice during their run as a team in Toxic Attraction.

During her run as a singles wrestler, Dolin was usually in a babyface role, but she never became NXT Women’s Champion. In early May, WWE released Gigi Dolin along with several wrestlers on the main roster and in NXT as part of their annual post-WrestleMania roster cuts.

In an interview with former WWE and AEW Women’s Champion Saraya on her Rulebreakers podcast, the former Gigi Dolin spoke about suffering from depression while on the WWE NXT brand.

“My time in NXT was very rocky. I never really talked about this, but I went through a really bad depression phase working there. And it wasn’t particularly because of anything, it was just because I was such a creative person on the indies and when I went to WWE it was a whole new thing for me to work that, like 9 to 5, heavy workload schedule and kinda be told what I could and couldn’t do a lot, and, um, there were like some other stuff too.”

“But I went through a really bad depression. I kinda lost who I was. I wasn’t sure of myself anymore and I got injured. I tore my meniscus (knee) in training. And it was one of those things that kind of snowballed after that.”

Gigi Dolin Was Happy In NXT Before WWE Release

Before she was let go by WWE, Dolin was part of a babyface tag team with Shotzi, and Tatum Paxley joined them as a trio that was really impressive in the ring. Dolins expressed how happy she was at that time.

“And when I came back from my injury, I got to do this tag with Shotzi, which we wanted to do for a while. And they put us with Tatum. It was one of those things where as soon as we went out there together, it immediately clicked. We all had chemistry. It looked good. It felt good. We had fun.

Before we went out and when we came back, we were still laughing and having fun. And that was the first time that I genuinely experienced the best sisterhood in wrestling.”

As she continued, Gigi said she was the happiest she had ever been, she appeared on Raw and in TNA, but then WWE told her that they were canceling her contract, and that’s how sudden it was.

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