"It felt more like a work and less like fun" - Mia Yim speaks about relationship with wrestling prior to WWE release
Former WWE Superstar Mia Yim recently shared how she felt about the wrestling business as a whole before she was released from the company last year.
Yim performed for WWE for three years, and during that time, she faced off against some of the company's most talented stars, including Bianca Belair, Shayna Baszler, and Candice LeRae. Despite these stellar matchups, Mia Yim could never reach the mountain top of WWE and become champion, leading to her release from the company in November 2021.
Speaking to Inside The Ropes, Mia spoke about how near the end of her time in WWE, she no longer found wrestling fun and merely saw it as a job.
"So the biggest issue I had with the relationship between having fun and wrestling, it’s a lot of the mental game. So it was starting to feel more like work, like what is it, 2022? So the end of 2020, early 2021, it felt more like a work and less like fun. The minute it started to become like that, I needed to take a couple of months off just to kind of revaluate what I wanted to do in general, whether it be wrestling again or just real life stuff."
She added:
"Like, it’s not fun for me anymore. I don’t want to be told what I can and can’t do and like having to change who I am. I just I just didn’t know if that was something I wanted to do again." (H/T Inside The Ropes)
My chat with the incredible @MiaYim is now LIVE!
We talked everything from her IMPACT return, Queen of the Mountain, struggling with Anxiety, what the future holds and of course...dogs🐕
Thanks to @IMPACTUK for setting this up!
Check it out ⬇️
youtu.be/bX9FeIIRumY
Since leaving WWE, Yim's passion for the business may have been rekindled as she has begun to compete on various independent shows and perform once again for IMPACT Wrestling.
Mia Yim on her first post-WWE match
After being released from the company, like many of her fellow performers, Yim had to wait 90 days until she could wrestle for another promotion.
Another performer who also got released with Mia was Athena (f.k.a Ember Moon), which led to the pair facing off earlier this year at WrestleCon.
Continuing her conversation with Inside The Ropes, Mia Yim stated how Athena was the perfect opponent for her to face in her comeback match.
"It was definitely a conscious choice to have my first match back be against Athena, just because we both got released on the same day." Yim added: We’ve had bangers in the independent’s before we got signed and we haven’t wrestled since the independents. It was a comfortable return match, for my first match I needed to be safe." (H/T Inside The Ropes)
Mia Yim vs Athena highlights from yesterday
They killed it ! So happy to see both of these two back wrestling again. https://t.co/2acHkzcP1i
While some fans found their WWE runs to be relatively uninspiring, Mia Yim and Athena proved in their recent match that they still have plenty to offer the wrestling business.