Rachael Ellering Details How AEW Helped Her Following WWE Release

Since last summer, Rachael Ellering has found herself a home in Tony Khan's Ring of Honor, forming a tag team with Leyla Hirsch. But ROH isn't the first time that Ellering has worked under Khan, as she previously competed briefly for AEW in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In an appearance on "AEW Unrestricted," Ellering discussed getting the opportunity to work in AEW during that time. Though she noted that the appearances were kept to the promotion's shoulder content on YouTube, she still considers them an important moment in her career, given her release from WWE just months earlier.

"It was a really big deal for me, because...you get released from somewhere, it can really mess with your head a bit," Ellering said. "I was only in NXT just like over a year. I had zero TV matches when I was there, so I was just kind of Coconut shows as you call them, and just chilling in the warehouse six days a week. It wasn't the experience I thought or wanted to have there, which happens, and obviously, now I've proceeded that. I say that like it was a trauma, but you know, you go into things like 'Oh, this has been my dream since I was 16.' You envision it going a certain way. When it doesn't, it can be a little disappointing. I kind of had to process that, and Daily's Place was my first experience coming out of that."

Ellering's two matches for AEW saw her and ring announcer Dasha Gonzalez team come up short against Diamante and Ivelisse in the first round of the AEW Women's Tag Team Cup tournament, followed by a singles match against Penelope Ford. Ellering recalls instantly feeling at home within AEW, due to familiar faces like Ford, and the overall environment of the promotion, which provided her with a shot of confidence she felt she'd been missing following her WWE departure.

"It's just good to be around people that are...they're all there for the love of the game," Ellering said. "We all genuinely love this. So it was just good people to be around for kind of my first experience coming out of that. It's like a confidence booster, right, where everyone there is kind of building you up, where it's your first thing back in a really long time. So I left feeling super confident about it. And I also left 'Hey, I think this is where I want to put my roots down next. Kind of set a new goal on top of the 87 I already have in wrestling.' I really just liked the energy there. You could just feel that. I still feel that every week now that I'm there. It's just a different energy than places I've been prior. It's an energy I really, truly love."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "AEW Unrestricted" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription