Saraya Finally Confirms If She's Cleared to Wrestle in AEW

By Connor Casey

Saraya (fka Paige) officially confirmed on this week's AEW Dynamite that she is officially cleared to return to in-ring competition. At the start of a face-to-face between herself and Dr. Britt Baker, the 30-year-old confirmed that after undergoing numerous tests, she is "100% cleared." She and Baker then traded verbal shots before confirming they'll have a match at AEW Full Gear on Nov. 19.

The former WWE Divas Champion suffered what was initially considered a career-ending neck injury when she took a kick to the back of the head at a WWE house show on Dec. 27, 2017. She announced her retirement the following April but remained consistently on WWE television in the years that followed — first as the general manager of SmackDown, then as a manager for Asuka and Kairi Sane and eventually as a panelist on WWE Backstage. But once that showed was canceled those appearances dried up, resulting in WWE deciding to not offer her a new contract before it expired this past summer. Saraya then debuted for AEW at the AEW Grand Slam event but held off on saying whether or not she'd be allowed to wrestle in her new promotion. 

Paige's Final Years in WWE

While never being too critical of the WWE, Saraya openly admitted in recent interviews that her final years with the company were pretty rough. She was on Talk is Jericho last month and talked about how the news of her contract status was initially broken to her.

"Road Dogg is so sweet and he's always trying to baby me," she said. "And he was just like, 'So, we're probably not going to do the GM anymore, so you won't have to come to work tomorrow.' And then he decided that I was going to come and do a goodbye speech as GM, which I thought was really sweet, too. So, I ended up like flying in, doing that first segment of the show, and then flying back."

"But I ended up sitting in my house for three or four years," she later added. "And that's the most depressing thing, because you just feel like you're completely useless. And then you can't go and do anything else because you're under a contract where even though you're an independent contractor, you still have to get permission to do stuff. And then it would get turned down."

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