Elayna Black says she reached a point where she was afraid to care about anything because everything she loved kept disappearing. Her boyfriend left her, her dog died, and then WWE fired her. By the time that phone call came, the former Cora Jade says she felt like she had absolutely nothing left.
In a documentary published on TNA Wrestling’s YouTube channel, Black revisited the string of personal losses that surrounded the end of her WWE career. While she’d previously discussed her serious health problems and the fallout from her release, this time she connected everything that had happened and explained just how badly it affected her.
As Ringside News previously covered in June 2025, Black suffered an ectopic pregnancy in January 2023 that caused internal bleeding and required emergency surgery. She later struggled with severe depression, and her mother had to help care for her during that period. Black also suffered a devastating knee injury in January 2024, tearing her ACL, MCL, and both meniscuses during a WWE live event against Lyra Valkyria.
But those weren’t the only problems she was dealing with. Black revealed that her relationship also ended and her dog died, leaving her with one personal loss after another before WWE ultimately released her in May 2025. She summed up that entire stretch of her life without holding anything back.
“Ectopic pregnancy, boyfriend leaves me, lose my knee, dog dies. And then, I got fired a few months later.”
Black admitted that she eventually became so terrified of losing anything else that she started pretending nothing mattered to her. It was easier to convince herself she didn’t care than to risk having another important part of her life taken away.
That changed when WWE fired her. Wrestling had been her entire identity since childhood, and even after everything else she’d lost, she wasn’t prepared for what losing her job would do to her.
“I didn’t I was so scared of losing anything else that mattered to me that I didn’t want to pretend like anything mattered to me. So, when I got fired, inside I was like, ‘Oh, holy s** I just I’ve lost the literal last thing. Like, I have lost everything. This was the very last thing and now I’ve lost this. I literally have nothing.'”*
The release itself wasn’t completely unexpected. Black previously admitted she had a feeling WWE was going to let her go, even though she’d been featured prominently on NXT television. What made it worse was that wrestling was the one thing she’d spent her entire life working toward, and now that was gone too.
Black eventually stepped away from professional wrestling in July 2025, admitting at the time that the business was no longer good for her mental health. She didn’t know whether she’d ever get back the love she once had for wrestling, and continuing to force herself into the ring wasn’t helping.
In the documentary, Black explained that she had reached a point where she was questioning why she was still wrestling at all. She was having anxiety attacks before matches and beating herself up over her performances afterward.
“For a while I asked myself, I’m like, why am I doing this? Because I’m having anxiety attacks before I go out. I usually hate my matches and then afterwards I feel like s** because I hated my match. During that break is where I really had to ask myself that question and genuinely answer it.”*
Black eventually returned to wrestling and signed with TNA in January 2026. She said the decision wasn’t about finding the company willing to offer her the most money. She wanted to work somewhere that wouldn’t leave her feeling the way she did before walking away.
“I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care about who was going to pay me the most. I did not care about any of that. I just wanted to love wrestling again.”
Black has already spoken publicly about the medical emergencies and injuries that nearly derailed her career, but her latest comments show how much the other losses affected her too. Losing her boyfriend and her dog was painful enough. Losing WWE on top of everything else left her questioning whether she had anything worth holding on to. She’s now back in TNA, and the fact that she’s enjoying wrestling again is a significant change from where she was when WWE cut her loose.
What do you think about Elayna Black admitting she felt like she’d lost everything after her relationship ended, her dog died, and WWE fired her? Has her move to TNA been the fresh start she needed? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
