Taylor Wilde Explains Why She’s Stepped Away from Wrestling

Taylor Wilde says her wrestling career is on the shelf for now, and she explained why on her latest podcast episode. The TNA star was last seen in the ring back in August, and she noted on her Wilde On podcast that she’s stepped away due to a number of personal issues. You can see highlights below, per Fightful:

On why she’s stepped back from wrestling: “Wrestling is put on the shelf for me, again. I went through a ton of shit. I haven’t even publicly spoken about this. I went through a lot in my personal life. I touched on the custody battle and the divorce. My dad had a heart attack and first responders did CPR on him for almost an hour. He made it, but it was eight months in the hospital. He was in the ICU, he almost died a couple of times, he got COVID, he had to have a tracheotomy, but he’s home and independently living. That was beautiful. The custody battle and divorce got nastier at that time and affected my work life, both wrestling and as a firefighter. I moved in with my sister and now late brother-in-law during that time. Almost a year to the day that my dad had a heart attack, my brother-in-law had a freak accident happen and passed at 37. That left my 32-year-old sister and my then-two-year-old niece without a dad.

“With everything I had already been through, I thought, I better take a break. I was going to take a leave from firefighting, just do my podcast and be on the road full-time. What people don’t know is that when I came back to wrestling, I was bringing my son on the road with me full-time. That’s two 12-hour TV days with TNA, and then I was still doing my podcast, working full-time as a firefighter. I think, when I walked away from everything and was just going to focus on wrestling, my body pooped out on me. I had a neurological emergency that scared me enough to where I thought, ‘If this is any correlation to wrestling, then that’s it for me.’ I was going to give wrestling my all this past year and after everything I had been through, whether it was stress, the COVID vaccine, or it was going to happen to me anyway. My body gave out on me and so wrestling is on the shelf for me right now.”

On whether she may return in the future: “What happened to me was so scary and so forever changing, that I’m still not…I’ve been medically cleared if I ever change my mind, but my life is not 100 percent yet; they take certain privileges away from you if these things happen. Being a mom and recovering from all the emotional things that went on for two years, my life focus has changed. My self-worth was always wrapped up in producing: Wrestling, being a firefighter, being the best mom, doing, doing, doing, and maybe not dealing with emotional pain that, now that that all got wiped from me, my happiness stems from having a family. I met the love of my life during this and I just love family life.

“I would have loved to stay involved with IMPACT. Just because it may have been wrestling on the shelf, I would have loved to stay in a manager role. The Coven was my baby. I wrote that shit. Being a witch on screen was everything I dreamed of in the 90s. All that shit is really who I am. Producing backstage, participating creatively, commentary, I would have loved to stayed. I guess, the way the company goes, right time and right place, it didn’t end up staying that way. I’m living in the world that I always am, which is, I don’t know. I retired at 25 and then I came back ten years later. I don’t know.”