Ember Moon On Keeping Her NXT Return a Surprise, When She Learned She’d Be Returning

Ember Moon discussed her return to NXT, keeping it a surprise and more in a new interview with Daily DDT. You can see some highlights from the interview below:

On her return at NXT Takeover: “I’m still buzzing, man. I’m just super excited and I haven’t stopped smiling. I would say it’s like the class reunion, but you don’t know anyone there. You’re all excited like, ‘I can’t wait to tell everyone what I did,’ but then you’re like, ‘Oh wait, I don’t know none of y’all. Am I in the wrong year?’ I’m so happy, I’m so excited.”

On when it was decided she would return to NXT: “I found out I was going back to NXT maybe a couple of weeks ago. I threw out the feelers in January. It was one of those things where I was like, ‘I don’t know if they want me back, I don’t know how I fit in, I just don’t know.’ I talked to Hunter and asked, ‘How would you feel about me coming back to NXT?’”

On why she wanted to go back to NXT: “I was like, ‘Man, I’m really digging this NXT vibe right now.’ Raw and SmackDown are doing great, but I’m sitting here thinking, ‘I don’t know if I fit in there anymore.’ I didn’t know if Ember Moon still belonged on Raw and SmackDown. I was looking at NXT and all my friends from the indies were there killing it. Not that any of the other girls weren’t, I’m just saying that when you’ve traveled the road for a hot dog and a handshake, you have a different friendship and admiration for those people than you do with coworkers.”

On getting advice from Edge as she was trying to come back from her injury: “I was so distraught in my own feelings and Edge reached out to me. I didn’t think it was Edge, I thought it was Braun playing a trick on me. I was like, ‘What? How did you get my number?’ He goes, ‘No, this is Edge.’ I said, ‘Oh! Hi, sir. How are you doing today?’ Honestly, because of him and Triple H, that’s how it started turning around. Edge was basically like, ‘Do this, get a sauna, get a bike, you have to do this.’ He basically sent me a Cliff-noted version of what he was doing because he had such a bad Achilles rupture, too, that they said he would never come back.”

On keeping her return a surprise: “I was in Orlando for most of September and then I flew home for three days. I was in a beanie, a hoodie, sweatpants, and I was sweating bullets for a month in Orlando. People needed to know my dedication. The thing is they were going to do something with me leaving because I was injured, but then someone leaked I was injured. So, I was like, ‘Oh, come on!’ I didn’t tell anyone [about this return], so I’m very certain the only people who knew were me, Hunter, and Vince because Hunter had to talk to Vince about me coming to NXT. I’m assuming that’s the only group that knew and the people that made the video packages and stuff. It was probably less than 10 people to the point where people from backstage were like, ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ I go, ‘No, I think it’s Bo Dallas.’ Thank goodness for Bo throwing out the sleeper tweets. Thank you, Bo, the original NXT champion. I will always Bo-lieve, which is mostly why I tweeted that out. I was saying thank you to Bo, so I don’t even know if he thought it was me or if he suspected it, but thank you to Bo Dallas. I like how everyone likes to chalk it up as a negative, but it was me saying thank you.”

On wanting to work with Io Shirai and others in NXT: “When I was on the independent scene, I thought she was the best female wrestler in the entire world. To what she did to how she wrestled with the other person in the ring, it’s just magic. It really is magic … It’s crazy how things work out. I just might get to wrestle someone on my wrestling bucket list and that’s Io Shirai. There’s plenty of other women, too, like Rhea Ripley and Dakota Kai. Dakota’s someone I traveled with for years on the independent scene and we’ve never gotten to wrestle each other, not once. Candice LeRae, who I’ve gotten to share a ring with many times. I love that child like a sister. Raquel Gonzalez who is an absolute beautiful monster of a human being. Just chaos and destruction, I love it. You have Kayden Carter and Kacy Catanzaro. You have such a variety. Xia Li, too. You have all these women I’m just yearning for the opportunity to, one, enjoy and have fun with them, but also prove that I’m better than them because that’s what I do. I’m playing in all respects, but yeah, just looking to have fun with all of them in the ring and sharing that experience with new friends and future competitors.”