Sonya Deville Recalls Fight Between Liv Morgan & Mandy Rose At WWE Performance Center

Over the years, stories about backstage drama have often resurfaced, surprising many fans with exactly what happened in the locker room during some of their favorite eras. While backstage brawls have seemingly always been present in pro wrestling, in today's world, workplace conflict is controversial, making Sonya Deville's story about an actual fight between Mandy Rose and Liv Morgan at the Performance Center somewhat of a shock.

During an appearance on CJ Perry's "Identity Crisis" podcast, Deville recalled that the fight initially began when Morgan and Rose were involved in a training session. "Beating the living s**t out of each other!" she recalled, noting that they all love each other now. "We're in promo class, okay? We're all new. Liv got to the Performance Center a year before me and Mandy, and then me and Mandy came – we're all still new though – and we're in promo class and we did this drill and it's called the pull apart promo."

Deville further explained that the idea was to stage a fight between two would-be wrestlers, pull them apart, and let the two of them cut a promo following the altercation. "So, it gets you in the vibe of a real match or whatever," she recalled. "Me, Aliyah, this girl – Danielle Camilla, I think – we were the three people hired, so to speak, to pull them apart." However, while everything seemed normal at first, she realized there were actual punches being thrown between Rose and Morgan.

Deville further recalled feeling wind past her face as the two women began throwing punches, and then hearing the two throw verbal attacks mid-brawl. "And then I'm like: 'Wait. Is this real?' And then I feel the intensity in somebody's body when they're no longer working?" she recalled, which Perry related with, agreeing that it's something that wrestlers know after years in the industry. "When they grab and you just know: oh, it's a fight now? So, I'm feeling that, and then I look [and] Nouf's gone, Aliyah's gone, Daniela's gone. They bounced! Because now, it is a scramble!"

Deville then realized that she was in the middle of a real brawl between Rose and Morgan, and that she had to quickly do something. "And I'm going 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!' And I'm like shooting on both of them to get them off each other!" she recalled, noting that the two women grabbed hold of each other's hair and began swinging at each other. "Finally, the boys slide in to help me rip them apart, 'cause they go, you know, untamed animals. We get them apart, okay, they slide out, the coaches are yelling (...) and Mandy was so proud at the time that she didn't have hair extensions back then, so she rolls out, and she's like 'You pulled my hair, you pulled my hair!' and she goes, 'At least my hair's real, b**ch!'"

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Identity Crisis" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.