When Dana Brooke made her NXT debut, it appeared WWE had big plans for the female Superstar. However, like many of the developmental brand's wrestlers who eventually find themselves under Vince McMahon's control, she never really managed to find her place on RAW and SmackDown.
As the years passed, she continued slipping down the card and was being rehabbed in NXT before WWE released her last September.
This past weekend, Brooke rebranded herself as Ash By Elegance and made her TNA debut during their Hard To Kill PPV. Talking to Busted Open Radio (h/t WrestlingNews.co), Ash explained the meaning behind her new persona.
"Ash by Elegance is a different side of me, but I try to live my life every single day as being super elegant," she explained. "Elegant is a word, but I feel like it has a variety and many multiple meanings. It's classiness. It's elegant. It's beautiful. It just means so much that I'm definitely gonna bring that element into the ring and show everyone what class and elegance truly means."
Asked whether she's now officially part of the TNA roster, the former WWE Superstar teased, "What I will say is definitely keep your eye out and do not miss an episode of TNA wrestling going forward."
Talk then turned to why she thinks WWE released her last year and admitted that she believes the company lost faith in her.
"I honestly think they [WWE] didn’t believe in me. You know, producers, T.J. (Wilson) was a very big advocate for me and he would always be like, ‘Dana can do it, Dana can do it, Dana can do it’ and it just, it wasn’t happening and I wasn’t that girl. I wasn’t the girl that they were trying to push to that next level. I was the one that I was always given to take the pin fall and I was okay with it, thinking in my mind, there’s gonna be a shot. There’s gonna be that next time and there just never was that next time."
"I fought so hard. I’ll never forget this and I think it was 2018 or ‘19 in the Money in the Bank match where I wanted to hang from the briefcase and swing from it and fall and a pile of girls catch me and they’re like, ‘No, no, no. That’s a little too dangerous.’ I’m like, ‘Do you not know I was in gymnastics for 18 years and the bars are this high. I would do double backflips and layoffs out from underneath the bars. I promise you, I’m okay. Just let me do it. It will be a wow factor’ and I just don’t think that they had the confidence in me."
It sounds like Ash had more than her fair share of frustrations in WWE and fans have so far shared a lot of positive messages online about her new role in TNA. It's a second chance to establish herself as a top female star and, you never know, that may well eventually lead her back to WWE.