Sonya Deville comments on feeling “devastated” about her torn ACL injury in WWE

“I had no idea. I must be so naive to this. I’ve been an athlete, I was like, I’m fine. I tagged out. Alright, I’m lying. I knew something was wrong. It felt a little weird. I kind of like my knee buckled and I was like, Oh, that was weird. But like, I’m fine. I have eight minutes left in this match. We’re about to go to a commercial break. I need to get it together. And so I tagged out to Chelsea and I got on the apron. Luckily, we’re in a commercial break. So I was like alright, let me suss out the situation. So I’m hopping on the apron and anyone in the live audience was probably like, What the heck is she doing? But I’m hopping up in down on the apron trying to gauge if I can trust my knee. And sure enough, it was sketchy at best. I was like, Oh God, well, I’m in a match with Bianca, Charlotte, Chelsea, it’s a tag match, no less. I’m not about to change the entire match right now on live TV. So I was getting the comeback run on me and I had another eight minutes to wrestle. So I was like, we just got to do this. So Chelsea tagged me in for the hot tag. I had two comebacks ran on me. We did some falsies, I think a superplex. And the whole time I was like, Oh my God, I hope I don’t fall flat on my face. And sure enough, we made it to the end and I limped back, I got my rental car, went to my hotel, tried to pretend like it didn’t happen, because in this business, no one wants to be injured and out of play. Because I just won my first title. I was so sad, I was like, It’s fine. It’s just a sprain, I’ll wrap it. Long story short, I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. And I fell face-first into the wall. And I was like, Oh, I think something’s wrong.”

How much pain were you in?

“No pain. I swear. I know that sounds very weird. I’ve torn my ACL and every ACL is different. We’re not all created equal in that sense, but I didn’t feel any pain. I just felt instability. And it wasn’t even swollen. And then the doctor looked at the MRI, and he’s like, your ACL has probably been torn for a long time.”

On having to vacate the championship:

“20 days, 21 days [before] who’s counting? 30 seconds. I was so devastated. I mean, I’d been with the company for nine years. And of course, part of being in the WWE is to one day grab that brass ring and get gold around your waist and that’s what I had been striving for, of course. So I finally got my first championship and I was so happy. I was so elated. I was ready to make those titles mean more than ever before. And the injury came, which is probably why I ran back to my hotel and hid in my room and didn’t tell anyone I was injured.”