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During a recent appearance on the virtual Highspots signing former Impact Wrestling star Taya Valkyrie spoke about her time with the company, which included her carrying the Knockouts championship for the longest reign in company history.
Taya would first address where she thinks she’ll end up (WWE or AEW) now that she’s a free agent.
“Well, I really enjoy both products. Obviously I’m a wrestling fan, always have been. There’s a lot of people that get into wrestling [that] are wrestling fans, surprise, and honestly, I don’t know what’s gonna happen next for me because as a lot of people don’t realize is that I have been signed for about eight and a half years from AAA into Lucha Underground into IMPACT and this is actually my first-ever time in my career as a free agent. So, it’s a really important time for me to really think about what’s important for me, for my family and make the best decision moving forward for my career. So, we will see. It will all play out, don’t worry.”
She later would discuss some of the very positive experiences she had while working Impact, calling the backstage atmosphere extraordinarily fun and supportive.
“I mean, that was one of the most fun times of my career because all the women, the comradery that we have, all the guys, like everyone gets along and everyone’s having fun and everyone’s really there to make it work and make a product that’s authentic to us and those players that are in that roster, you know what I mean? So, everyone that’s backstage to like the writers, they are so trusting in us to — like they don’t tell me, ‘Well Taya, say this.’ It’s like, ‘This is the message that we need you to do but say it however Taya would say it.’ Like they really trusted us and it creates, gives us all the opportunity to grow so much more creatively I think and they trust us to make the right decisions for who we are because nobody knows Taya more than I do and I really am thankful that I worked for a company like that and especially during that time when I was coming off this really long stint in Mexico and heavily influenced with Lucha Libre, to kind of get more accustomed to the American style and how that works. So yeah.”
Later…Valkyrie would name off a number of talents she hopes to step into the ring with, which include AEW’s Kris Statlander and NXT women’s champion Io Shirai.
“Well, I have never wrestled Kris Statlander, which I think would be — call her up. I’ve never wrestled her. Is that weird? There’s somebody like that too that I’ve never wrestled before. I don’t know. Even someone like Britt Baker, I’ve only ever been in a tag match with her for like — I think we were against each other for like two seconds. There was never any sort of actual, you know, interaction there so I would love to face both of them. I would love to face obviously some people like Charlotte [Flair] and Sasha Banks and I have wrestled Io [Shirai] before one time in STARDOM and I would like to wrestle her again. So those are kind of my current top chicks if I had to pick.”
Valkyrie’s full appearance can be seen in the video below. (H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)