Saraya Comments On How She Felt After AEW Full Gear Match
Saraya has commented on how she is feeling after wrestling in her first match in nearly five years: “I feel fantastic.”
One of the most anticipated matches at AEW Full Gear was Saraya facing Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D. in what was Saraya’s first singles match in nearly five years. In December 2017 while wrestling as Paige at a WWE live event, Saraya suffered a serious neck injury that required surgery.
During the build to Full Gear, Saraya talked about how she was optimistic about being cleared to wrestle again when she signed with AEW in September, but she wasn’t cleared officially to return until Halloween on October 31st.
The story of the Saraya-Baker match saw Baker attack Saraya’s neck throughout the match. While Baker came close to winning several times, Saraya was able to keep coming back and eventually hit three lifting DDTs, including two in a row, for the pinfall win in a match that went about 13 minutes.
At the Full Gear post-show press conference, Saraya revealed that she felt fantastic after the match.
“I feel fantastic, and the wonderful thing about, Tony really takes care of us, down to a tee, he was like, I’m not going to let you get back in the ring until you’re officially, 100% ready to go, and I was like, I promise you, I got this, I promise you. So we did MRIs, we did CG scans, we did X-rays, and my neck was 100% ready to go, even I was shocked, I was like I didn’t realize it would be 100%, but we got there, and the thing is, again, with Tony, too, is he is very understanding when it comes to injuries and stuff like that, so he said, I want to take it slow, I don’t want to rush back in, like I did the last time, with a lot of work, straight away, and he was just so understanding, I really appreciate him, and I’m happy I got to do this in AEW, too, I’ve been wanting to come here for a long time.”
While everything went well during the match, Saraya talked about how she was very nervous to have a match again.
“Walking out, this was the most nervous I’ve ever been in my career, because I want to give 110% and I know in AEW, I felt like I had to step up my wrestling game. Wrestlers everywhere are fantastic but I felt like the caliber of AEW women’s wrestling is so high, I’m like, man, we’ve got Toni, and we’ve got Jamie Hayter on the show today, and I’m like, oh my gosh, please go before them, because they’re just so good, all the women here are so good, so I had a lot of emotions.”
“And also, I felt like there were a lot of eyes on the match, too, a lot of eyes, even non-wrestling fans, so there was just a lot of focus on this show, and I was like, man, I don’t want to let anyone down, I don’t want to let Tony down, he’s given me this opportunity.”
After her victory, Saraya shared a big hug with her brother that was at ringside to celebrate her victory.