All Elite Wrestling talent Saraya, who revealed during Wednesday’s episode of AEW Dynamite that she had been cleared to make her in-ring return, spoke with Renee Paquette as part of The Sessions podcast and explained further details on the process of finally getting cleared to make her return to the ring.

“I came to terms with not being able to wrestle any more, and that’s fine, but a couple of years ago, I did do some X-Rays and they were looking great. I didn’t do the full MRI, just the X-Ray’s, it’s not like a perfect read on the neck with the whole fluid thing, X-Ray is just the bones and MRI, you can see everything, including the inner workings of the neck and the important parts like how much fluid is around there, it’s crazy. I was nervous about doing the MRI a couple of years ago, but the X-Ray was looking good, maybe in a couple of years it’ll start looking better. I wasn’t going to rush it, because Edge was out for 9 years, Stone Cold had the match with Kevin Owens, but he didn’t bump very much, it was limited, but it was still an amazing match. I thought, I could probably pull off doing a Stone Cold match, I’m throwing that idea at Tony Khan and he’s like, with Sting coming in, we did tag matches, maybe we could do tag matches and I was like hmm, if I were to come back, I would want it to be a Singles Match, I remember talking to the doctors and they were like, you can do this, but we’re not going to clear you to take a bump.

That’s the whole misconception with how the internet works, she talked to 25 doctors and AEW doctor, Doc Sampson cleared her. He didn’t clear me for anything, I went out there with Britt and we did our own thing. I didn’t ask for clearance from the doctor there, I’m going to be honest. He was cool with it, just please don’t take a bump. It was, if you want to actually have matches, we have to get you completely cleared, that means MRI, CT scan, everything. I don’t want to go to a doctor that is associated with wrestling, because I feel there is bias there. I don’t want to make the same mistake where I came back and I’m wrestling every day, I want to be aware and careful of my neck this time, I want to get to the nitty gritty of what it looks like and how much I can do, and if I’m going to be paralyzed. That was the biggest scare, if I did wrestle, I could potentially get paralyzed.

Halloween, I went to the doctor in California, one of the best around, if anyone is going to tell me no, this guy is going to tell me no, because his job is on the line. I got the X-Rays done, these are great, but we have to triple check with CT scans and MRI. I did the CT Scan and MRI within the same hour, it was very quick. He sat there, we went through them all and he went, you’re cleared. I burst into tears and said are you serious, I was still asking questions about the fluid around my neck, it was just the fluid was back. The fusion was perfect, there were no fractures above or below and he said let’s talk about paralysis, it’s rare and if you get kicked there, you have a cushion now and if you ever feel that you’re not feeling too well, take some time off, you know your body, I will clear you to get back in the ring. I asked him how many matches I can have and he said take it easy, do one match a month and gradulally start building that up, but long story short, Halloween is when I got the full clearance.”

The full interview is available at this link.