Former WWE developmental talent Zeda Zhang recently appeared on an episode of Women's Wrestling Weekly, and the competitor of the first Mae Young Classic dished on the reason she may have been cut from the company:
"They told me why. But talking to other people who have been released, the why that they tell you, might not exactly be the why. So, all they said was we know you work really hard, but unfortunately, hard work is not what gets you far in this industry. I think what it comes down to, is the market because when I got signed, I was actually suppose to get signed [in] June or July of 2017 but they brought me in half a year early. Because they wanted me to come with the Chinese crew because they were trying to get into China at the time. But, because of the issues overseas and I guess the politics with everything, it's hard to get in there. Because, China has a lot of rules and stuff like that, especially when it comes to another company from overseas trying to come in and promote something such as fighting and also the president over there is more traditional and he is very much about peace even though this is entertainment. They view wrestling back during like the Attitude Era. So, their idea is a little bit different... So, it's kind of tough.
Zhang also reveals why it was so hard for her to develop a character, noting that she didn’t have the freedom to do so:
"I don't have the freedom of what kind of character I want to be. I can't really test it out. They tell you when you wrestle and when you get to try things out, and they just tell you, "be yourself". But the thing is everything that makes me is my background - my modelling, singing, dancing, music and MMA - and me just being Chinese in general. That's what I am but when I was there, I can't do the MMA thing because someone else has it, I can't do the singing thing because someone else has it, can't do the dancing thing cause someone else has it, can't do the modelling thing because someone else has it, so I'm left with nothing. I can't be Chinese either, they told me, I wasn't allowed to be billed from China because it's not true so because of that I was left with this heart gimmick."