After being released by WWE, Lana (whose real name is CJ Perry) stayed away from pro wrestling until making her surprise AEW debut at All Out last month.
Since then, we've seen the company take a slow-burn approach to her reunion with real-life husband Miro, though pairing them up again feels like a strange decision seeing as it's something WWE got a love of mileage out of when he was the "Bulgarian Brute" Rusev and she was the "Ravishing Russian" Lana.
Talking to Chris Van Vliet, Perry opened up about returning to being a manager and shared her lofty aspirations for where the role could take her in AEW.
"I want to be the best of all time. I want to be the best wrestling manager of all time," she stated. "I want to be when people think of like, people often want to be managed by Paul Heyman because he is the best manager of all time right now. I want that spot and so I want people to be like, 'I want CJ Perry to manage me.'"
"I would rather do that than try to become champion or fight for whatever championships and be the best hustler for those people to be champions and create a legacy and a name that way. I just feel that's my calling. So if at some point I gotta fight some bitches in the ring, of course, I'll fight some bitches in the ring."
Well, she deserves credit for aiming high!
As for why it took so long for us to see Perry in AEW, it simply came down to the fact she was still under contract with WWE for some time after Miro's release.
"Well, when Miro first joined AEW, I was still in WWE. That was in 2020 and he started there September I think, and so I couldn't," Perry explained. "I was still in WWE and I had a very lucrative contract. I was on TV every week, so we both thought it made sense for me to stay. Then I finished my time a year later and Miro wanted me to come over to AEW and he was plugging me into the story. That's how I got the name Hot and Flexible."
"I needed a little bit of a break. At the beginning. I wanted to be home for a little bit and I wanted to do things. I didn't want to jump right back on the road and so I took a little bit, like about a year, and it was just trying to figure out the time, you know, like, Tony Khan has great things going on his show, and it's just I had things going on and Miro had things and we just, it's all about timing."
Do you think Perry has what it takes to dethrone Paul Heyman as the best manager in pro wrestling? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.