Summer Rae On How Vince McMahon Felt About Her, If She Would Return To WWE
Former WWE star Summer Rae sat down with Casual Conversations to discuss her wrestling career. Rae revealed her she was supposed to come up to the main roster less than two years into her WWE tenure.
"I was like a year and half in developmental, almost got called up six months before with Damian Sandow," Rae said. "I was gonna be like his girl, like I was gonna be his valet and we had a whole thing together."
Instead Rae stayed down FCW, later transitioning to NXT before being called up to be the valet for Fandango. Rae had nothing but nice things to say about Vince McMahon, saying she wasn't afraid to go and talk to him whenever she felt it necessary.
"Oh Vince loved me," Rae said. "I love it, I would walk my butt straight into Vince's office all the time. Vince did not scare me at all. Mind you like I have to be respectful. I would never just walk in there, I would knock and then wait for hours and hours but if I ever was having an issue or was thinking about leaving, I went and talked to him."
Rae would be released from WWE in October of 2017 following a year off due to injury. Rae was frank about her injury issues and when she first discovered them, and also revealed she had tried to leave WWE sooner but had been stopped by the then head of talent relations.
"I did try to quit but Mark Carano didn't let me," Rae revealed. "I wasn't trying to quit but I was being like I was on injury, either bring me back or let me go. They had me in this pivot-like moment where I couldn't go do other things but I was still getting injury pay.
"It was from time over time, so I have two things," Rae explained. "I have a bone spur on a vertebra on my neck I'm pretty sure. It's c4, I can't remember so from that I think it's just the over and over bumping. I have thoracic outlet syndrome. I remember I was at a photoshoot, and they told me to pose like this and they wanted me to go like this or something and I was like yeah, so I did it. They were like no no like this and I went no I know like this and I put my shoulders back and then Annie my publicist came up to me she goes no put your shoulders back and I went 'what do you mean? My shoulders are back.' She goes to look in the mirror and I go 'huh' and so I look in the mirror and I went 'oh' and I think my shoulders were kind of like forward. She did it and then the photographer did it and I went 'oh.'"
From there Rae began to ask more questions until it was apparent that something was wrong. Ultimately it led to her long hiatus, so long that she forgot what her last match in WWE was.
"I went to TV," Rae said. "We had this big meeting and I was walking with Tenille (Emma) and John Laurinaitis passed me and I went like this (arm gesture) and I said 'hey' and my hands kind of turned from this to this. I went 'oh gosh, do you also feel shooting pain when you do that right?' And she said 'do what?' And I said 'when you put your hands like parallel behind' and she goes 'no.' And I'm like 'well that's weird' and then so I started asking some of the boys and some of the boys were like 'oh yeah I can't flex my hand.'
"So it was almost normalized and these nerve damage nerve kind of thing. I could've ignored but then at the time too like Daniel Bryan, I mean you know Brie was saying Bryan couldn't open the door knobs. He's come out and said all this stuff right but I was like that ain't gonna be me. I'm not gonna be able to one day not pick up my baby one day. I went to our doctor and he was like we'll have you get checked out at a couple of places and they're like that's so weird we had no idea. They sent me to the Pittsburgh doctor there and that's why I never knew my last match was my last match. The fans will send me DMs like you wrestled Alicia Fox on a house show which was one of my last matches I guess."
Rae doesn't consider herself officially retired. Nevertheless, while she'd be willing to do a few things till, she doesn't believe she could ever work a full time schedule.
"I'm not like no one's ever told me you can't do it again but I know personally I could never go over and over again," Rae said. "Could I like to do the Royal Rumble and have a little storyline? Maybe, but I would need treatment. Like I need treatment now like my migraines got so bad."
Rae has worked a few independent matches since leaving WWE and recently got a job as an executive for a cryptocurrency company. If she were to make a return to wrestling however, it would only be for one company.
"I love WWE," Rae said. "I haven't gone to other promotions because I also know how that is with WWE and like I definitely feel like my loyalty is with them. They gave me such a big part of life. Hopefully one day I'll have a husband and a baby but if I don't have a man but I do have a baby, because I adopt, I would want them to see me and that was such a big part of my life as Summer Rae. I get called Summer on the street and I like to turn around. So I love wrestling. I would for sure be okay with going back."
You can watch the full interview below.