A.Q.A (Zayda Ramier in WWE) opens up about her time in NXT.
On November 4, A.Q.A was released by WWE just seven months after making her in-ring debut for the company. She only had five matches during her time in NXT, last competing on June 1st.
She recently appeared on A Wrestling Gal podcast and began by clearing up a few misconceptions about her departure from WWE. A.Q.A added that she felt ill during training one day which led to her meeting with WWE's medical team.
"There’s a few misconceptions out there about what happened [concerning my departure from WWE]. I saw one report that said that I asked for it and I was like, ‘I’m glad you think that I got the bravado to do that’ but I’m like no, I didn’t ask for it. But, basically what happened was it started in June. So, June was my last match. June, was it 1st, 6th, 7th? Something like that and I was in a tag match. It was like me and Zoey Stark versus Indi [Hartwell] and Candice LeRae and so I got hurt in the match. I got — my ribs got bruised, so I was out for all of June, and so July, I was basically getting ready to come back, get in the ring, training, everything like that and at the end of July, I went to gym class one day and I woke up that morning knowing like, ‘I shouldn’t go today.’ It was just like, you know how you can just feel it? Like you’re just not into it? I was like, ‘I shouldn’t go’ but I’m like, ‘Ima go’ and so I go in my refrigerator and I grab whatever I can see. I just shove it down. I’m like, ‘Let’s go, it’s leg day’ so I had to eat something and so I get there and the first exercise is fine, it’s fine but it’s not challenging and I’m like, ‘Everyone’s pumping iron,’ going boom, boom, boom. You know, you got Ivy Nile over there just picking up Bron Breakker and squatting him and I’m like, ‘You know what? Fine. You know what? If you guys showed up and showing out, I’m gonna show up and show out.’ That was mistake number three. One, was deciding to go and then two was when I decided, ‘Hey, I’m gonna do the sled pushes’ and so then I go over there to the sled pushes so this is where mistake number three comes in and I do ‘em and I feel great but when I stop, I get like — my body kind of tells me, ‘You need to chill out a little bit.’ You know how you’re doing an exercise and do a little rest break? And I’m like, ‘Nah, nah, I got this. I’m ready, let’s go’ and so I do a few more and I come back and immediately, my body’s like, ‘Oh my God’ and I’m like, ‘Okay. I need to sit down.’ Even my friend — I’m not gonna say anyone’s name because I don’t want anyone to be brought into it but, one of my friends that was there and she’s doing great on NXT, I’m so proud of her. She was like, ‘You need to sit down,’ because I got really hot. Like I felt like I was a human furnace. I was like, ‘Why am I so hot?’ And so, me being a dummy, I walked straight past my water bottle and I go in the restroom and I’m like splashing water on my face and it’s giving me this temporary relief and I’m like, ‘Okay, okay. What’s going on?’
And then I look down and my hands are starting to shake and they’re all clammy and I’m like, ‘What is this feeling?’ Unbeknownst to me, I deal with anxiety. I have anxiety which almost everybody does but, I always have those exact symptoms except for it’s always followed by like the hyper, I’m like [breathing rapidly]. That’s how I know I’m having an anxiety attack but I had every symptom except for the breathing so it just canceled out in my mind. So I’m just thinking like, ‘My body’s like, you’re dying.’ You know, this is the last little hoorah and so I go to the medical team and I’m like, ‘Hey, I feel like I’m finna pass out. I’m really hot, shaky, I’m jittery. I don’t know what’s going on’ and the person, she’s like, ‘Okay. Let me sit you down.’ They did like a little legs up thing and I was like, ‘This ain’t doing nothing for me’ and she goes back and she gets an orange Gatorade. I remember it specifically because I wanted the blue one. But she gives me an orange Gatorade and an ice pack and immediately, the hot goes away. But I still have these really bad shaky jitters and not realizing it’s just my anxiety acting up, trying to tell me, ‘Hey, calm down. Everything’s all right. Just chill out’ and I got these little jitters and I’m like, ‘Oh okay, hey, the hot’s gone’ but what’s going on with my body still? It was still jittery and then she asked me casually, she’s like, ‘You ever been hot like that before?’ And then I was like, ‘Well, when I was about 13 on my trampoline, yeah’ and she asked me to describe that and I was like, ‘You know how you stand up too fast and you see the black?’ So I described [it], then I was like, ‘Yeah, that was the last time I felt like how I’m feeling right now," she said.
After undergoing a series of medical teams and feeling fine, A.Q.A was cleared by WWE's doctors, though because they couldn't identify the cause of her symptoms, she was medically disqualified from competing for the company.
"And then she was like, ‘Oh okay, cool’ and so I’m not thinking anything about it and so as time goes on, about two, three days later, one of the head doctors comes in. He’s telling me, he’s like, ‘Hey, you know, just to be sure, we’re gonna pull you for a little bit’ and they gotta double check, triple check, quadruple check all their boxes before they put you back in the ring so I’m like, ‘All right. I’m probably gonna be out at the most, two weeks.’ So I’m like, ‘All right.’ So I felt fine immediately after I had that Gatorade and everything so I’m like, ‘All right. Just doing normal protocol or whatever’ and so as time goes on, the weeks go on and then the months go on and I’m like, ‘What’s going on here?’ And by the time I got to about the third doctor, this was like the third doctor that had asked me like, ‘Hey, tell me about what happened to you when you were 13’ and I was like, ‘Oh no’ and in that moment, I realized, ‘They might think whatever happened to me at 13 is what’s happening to me right now,’ you know what I mean? So, those two — that story basically followed me all the way to my release, was just that they was like, ‘You know, we’re unsure of why that happened now and the last time you ever felt like this was when you were 13.’ But to be honest, when I was 13, I was outside on the trampoline, hot in the middle of the day and honestly, when I was 13, I would go in the house and get maybe one or two sips of water because I had energy. I’d be on the trampoline for hours just teaching myself stuff that I shouldn’t have been doing and so I put in my — I was like, ‘Oh no, I think they think that the two stories go together’ and it’s no one’s fault. It’s not my fault for answering a question and it’s not their fault for following up on it. So I wanted to make that clear. No one’s at fault here. It’s just that they were going along with the normal protocol so they put me through — they thought it was my heart at first, so they put me through a bunch of tests and everything. I passed every single test with flying colors, especially this one — it was one, this one test and not that they were hoping I would fail, but if I failed it, it was like, ‘Okay, this is what it is and we got a diagnosis now’ so it wasn’t like, ‘Fail, fail, fail.’ It was just like, ‘Okay, now we know what it is.’
And I passed that one and it stumped them and it was like, ‘You weren’t supposed to pass that one because that one would, you know, prove what we’re thinking right now’ and so I passed that test and then I had to be put on a heart monitor for like a whole month. We did that, came back, all the test results for that was great and so September kind of goes dead silent and my medical team person, he’s like checking in and I’m not getting any updates. What I later found out was they were basically trying to come up with some new tests for me like, ‘Okay, let’s test this and if she’s in the ring for this long or someone lifts her up, will this happen?’ You know, they were just trying to figure out something so they could get me back in the ring and then finally come about October 5th and that’s when I had sent the tweet out like two weeks before when I was like, ‘You gotta laugh at the ups and downs.’ It was like a Steph Curry GIF and he’s like going back, then I’m like, ‘You just gotta laugh at the ups and downs.’ So that day actually, I came to NXT and I got medically disqualified. They were like, ‘We’re gonna disqualify you’ basically because — this was the exact quote, it was, ‘You’re 100 percent fine to wrestle. You just can’t wrestle here,’ which means like we can’t basically — we can’t tell Vince [McMahon] and them you’re all right but we don’t know why you almost passed out that day. Like why you thought you [were] gonna pass out basically, you know what I mean? They worded it a very nice way like, ‘You’re good. You’re good to go but it’s just, we can’t use you here until, you know, you or another doctor figures out what exactly happened that day.’ It’s like, there’s no — because I don’t wanna come off this way because I literally, I had a beautiful experience. If I started talking bad about WWE, I’m lying. I didn’t have a bad experience at all. Everyone I met there was great, everything that happened to me, it was great. It was just an unfortunate decision. Like the outcome was just unfortunate," A.Q.A added.
A.Q.A would eventually visit her family doctor to have more tests run where it was determined that she was likely just dehydrated on that day of training. Despite the outcome, she has no ill will about how things played out.
"But, as I started talking to some of them and like I said, I won’t say anyone’s names but, and you can come to your own conclusion but it basically came down to I was dehydrated that day. So, that’s what happened and I went to my P.C.P. [Primary Care Physician] and I got all the medical work done. I was like, ‘Hey, can you test me for what A, B and C might be?’ Because I was like, I felt great the next day and I didn’t feel any — up until now, I don’t feel anything, you know what I mean? It was just that one day and that one moment when I got extremely hot and jittery and like I said, as soon as I had that Gatorade, it all went away and so, I just think it was something where — when I talked to my doctor to have him do all my bloodwork and tests and then she pulled out, she was like, ‘Yeah, you have a deficiency in this and that but all of these other levels are great so we’re gonna get you some Vitamin D and stuff, get those levels back up’ and I went to a doctor that was recommended to me by them [WWE]. I went to him and basically [he] told me the same thing. He was like, ‘Yeah, you were dehydrated that day and I can see that’ and he wrote me a letter of clearance. He’s one of their hard doctors and he was like, ‘Yeah, you’re fine. I’m gonna clear you. There you go.’ So I had that and so what I later discovered was there was a bit of an inaccuracy on my paperwork so that’s what I think eventually led to my firing because all my doctors were in agreement that like, ‘You’re fine,’ you know what I mean? ‘But because of this particular diagnosis, we can’t clear you from that’ and which I understand. Liability, business, all that, I ain’t dumb. You don’t become a billion-dollar corporation out of nowhere, you know what I mean? So you gotta check all your Ps and Qs so I get it. It was no hard feelings on that and so I had ended up speaking to the doctor that put on my paper work, it was like, ‘You have two true episodes of syncope’ and I was like, ‘But I’ve never synco-fied. I’ve never passed out before.’ All I’ve had was the, you stand up, you see the black and that’s it, you know? You’re back to normal or doing whatever you’re doing and so I spoke with him on it and basically, I explained the situation.
I was like, ‘Here’s what my doctor said and here’s what your other colleague said.’ I was like, ‘How can we, you know, work together?’ Because for me, it was more so about, I just want my record clean, you know? Because that could affect my work elsewhere, you know what I mean? Because people are, ‘Oh! I don’t wanna take a gamble if you got medically disqualified’ but, I’m 100 percent fine and good to go. It’s just I was like, I need that — even if they don’t hire me back, I was like, ‘I just want that off of my medical record that I had syncope’ because I had never had that before and so I was in talks with him and he basically told me, he was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna work on it for you. I’m gonna get with your doctor.’ He already had my doctor in his system so I was like, ‘Oh, this is great’ and we’ll see what we come up with and what we can do so, still waiting to hear back on that. Like I said, more so I want that just so everyone knows I’m fine to wrestle. I don’t want anyone thinking they’re taking a risk on me and be like, ‘Oh, it could be my ring that she collapses in,’ you know what I mean? So, I’m fine and everything. I’m just waiting for that to clear up a little bit. So that’s basically what happened. It was no ‘they didn’t treat me right’ because I saw a lot of that online and it was just like, ‘Oh, they didn’t give her a chance and they threw her to the wolves’ and I was like, ‘No, no, no, no. They gave me plenty of chances," she said.
A.Q.A is set to return to in-ring action this evening, January 22, for the first time since that June 1 match in NXT. She’ll be competing for Generation Championship Wrestling as a part of the promotion’s Diamond Cup tournament.
H/T to Andrew Thompson and POST Wrestling for the transcription.
