Taya Valkyrie Talks About NXT’s Confusing Rebranding

Taya Valkyrie recently made a comeback to AAA and became the number one contender for Reina De Reinas Championship. She has her opinions on the recent rebranding of WWE NXT to NXT 2.0.

Taya Valkyrie recently featured on Insight with Chris Van Vilet where she talked about her stint with WWE under the ring name Franky Monet. The new number one contender for Reinas Championship had a good beginning with WWE where she trained and worked with NXT agents on her character. It was the transition to NXT 2.0 where things began to change for her.

“WrestleMania weekend came and Presley (her dog) debuted on NXT before me,” Taya said. “Everything was good. Like, it was hard, it was definitely like ‘okay, this is a totally different kind of situation than I’ve ever had or been in before, but if I survived all the drills and all the hours I’ve spent in this kind of environment in the other places, I’m sure I can do it here.’

“And that’s what I did. I did abs, I went extra ring time, I was training every day, I was doing promo classes, I was pitching ideas and having creative meetings. Road Dogg and I would sit down and talk about stuff for like, hours and I would just, I would have all these, I would have color charts. I would have movie references. I think about this stuff so much because I just care and I just love it so much. So things were like, really good. And you know, as you can see what happened, things changed as time went on and then 2.0 came about and I feel like that is when a really big change happened.”

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This was the point that Taya describes as the most confusing period she’s ever experienced in her pro wrestling career. It was saying something for Taya, given the number of promotions she has worked with over the years.

“It was just like the most confusing experience of like, my entire life,” Taya said. “And having worked, like I said, everywhere, I just left like ‘what is going on?’”

When asked if this was the phase where Taya and others came to realize they were walking on eggshells, especially with the onset of releases in August. She answered in affirmative.

“Everybody was,” Taya said. “I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I can also say that the energy definitely shifted. You know, we were hearing rumors all the time about ‘they’re going to be firing people this week.’ And then the whole week everyone’s like, you know, scared basically. I don’t know how else to say it. But we’re all busting our asses, you know what I mean? Like, everybody is there.

“I ended up training with Corino and the boys in the tag class and I love training with MSK and training with Imperium and all those guys because they’re pushing me and making me do different stuff. Like, just learning from different people in different walks of life and different paths and everything was like, good. Everyone was working really, really hard, but it’s just, the shift of how they wanted 2.0 literally changed from like, one day to the next. So, I feel like it just made everybody be like ‘oh my’, like holding your breath almost.”

Taya Valkyrie was released from WWE on November 4, 2021. Since then, she has made a comeback to AAA. Currently the number one contender for Reina de Reina’s Championship, Taya has warned Deonna Purrazzo to watch out as she would be looking to regain her old title which claims she never lost.

h/t: wrestling.inc for quotes