The last time we saw Trinity Fatu (Naomi) in a WWE ring was May 2022. At the time, it was reported that she and Mercedes Moné (Sasha Banks) had walked out of the company after a dispute over the Women's Tag Team Championships backstage at RAW.
WWE made a point of shaming them for making that decision on air and neither woman chose to return to the company.
The titles were soon vacated, of course, and Moné is now wrestling in Japan. As for Fatu, she's been spotted at New Japan Pro Wresting events supporting her former tag team partner and recently debuted on the April 28 edition of IMPACT Wrestling. Now, she's explained what led to her shocking WWE exit.
"I chose and wanted to be at IMPACT," Fatu tells Busted Open Radio (via WrestlingNews.co). "The doors are open for me everywhere, literally everywhere but I truly feel like Impact is the best choice for me at this point in my life right now with what I want to do...I feel that is where I'll be happiest and most utilized and really get to grow in the ways that I feel that I need to right now."
"I felt very stagnant and I wasn't happy. Ultimately, I left that day because of the way I was talked to and handled. Everything kind of just broke me that day. It had nothing to do with anything else, anybody else. That was just it. I had to."
"To go through all the backlash and the negativity and the lies and the rumors and then to also kind of just feel lost, it broke me. It was probably the lowest I've ever felt in my life," she continues. "But going through that made me reset and face it head on and figure out how to learn from this experience and grow from it [and] just find myself again in all of it."
Like Moné, she isn't giving too much away about what happened behind the scenes of RAW that day and there's a very good chance the full story will never be revealed.
Fatu is clearly happy not being part of WWE, anyway, and we're sure she and Moné will eventually get the chance to step back into the ring together. As for Women's Tag Team Championships, they're sadly no better utilised now than they were when both women decided to walk out.