Candice LeRae looks back on the end of her time in NXT.
Throughout her run on NXT, LeRae had been one of the brand's top stars. In her final match on the brand, she and Indi Hartwell lost the NXT Tag Team Championship to Io Shirai and Zoey Stark at NXT: The Great American Bash 2021. LeRae subsequently took several months off, as she announced her pregnancy shortly thereafter. LeRae gave birth to her son, Quill, in February 2022, and though she left WWE when her contract expired in May, she returned and joined the Raw roster in September.
Speaking on the Ringside Podcast, LeRae recalled how she and her husband, Johnny Gargano, planned having a baby. She noted that she's never a perfect time to step away, but she felt satisfied with her run with The Way alongside Gargano, Hartwell, and Austin Theory on NXT.
"When Johnny and I decided to have a baby, we were going into it saying, ‘when the time comes and we make this decision, I’m the one that has to step away. When do I feel good?’ There is just never a right time. It’s so hard as a woman, especially a woman with a career, to figure out what that right time is. We were doing all the stuff with The Way and that was a big part of it. Doing stuff with The Way, I started to feel very whole and very rounded. Me and Johnny, working with Austin Theory and Indi, I felt like getting to work with Indi made me feel like I was coming full circle and I was passing whatever I had learned in all my years to her," LeRae said.
LeRae went on to describe how she didn't know how she'd feel about her career and her potential return after her pregnancy. She noted that she felt whole and complete ahead of NXT Great American Bash, but now tha she's back, she's happily living the dream.
"We go to the point where, I asked myself, ‘if I end my career soon’...you don’t know when you’re pregnant how you’re going to feel on the other side of it. Am I going to want to come back to wrestling? You just don’t know. With so much unknown getting towards Great American Bash, I felt very whole and very complete. I have done so many cool things in my career that I felt like if that was it, I would feel good. Now, coming back from it all, I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to do this stuff. The kid inside me is beyond the moon happy as can be. It’s literally living a dream," she said.
In the same interview, LeRae stated that Becky Lynch set the bar high for returning from pregnancy. Check out her comments here.
LeRae previously revealed that she was cleared for physicality six weeks after she gave birth. More information is available here.
Catch up on our coverage of this week's episode of WWE Raw here.
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