CJ Perry, formerly known as Lana in WWE, is starting a new chapter of her career after her WWE run ended last month.
Her release on June 2 brought her time with WWE to an end shortly before her eight-year anniversary with the company. But in a recent appearance on “Talk Is Jericho“, Lana explained why she was even more disheartened when her husband, Miro (formerly known as Rusev) was released in 2020. First, she admitted that she lets herself wallow when upsetting situations, like her termination, occur because she believes the emotions will help her as a performer.
“Honestly when Miro got let go, for me personally, it was harder when Miro got let go. “I was a lot more depressed, I was a lot more sad. I mean don’t get me wrong, I had my days of crying and wallowing,” she explained, “but I think partly as a performer and artist, I allow myself to wallow. Like, ‘I’m finally not feeling happy, let me wallow so I can have more emotion when I need to do this part, you know, dig deep. So I just allow myself to feel, I think, if I think it actually does help us sometimes tap into being better performers or actors.”
Lana then recalled her reaction when Miro was released, and she stated that she was shocked that the company let him go before her. She then argued that WWE was at least partially responsible for that mindset.
“With Miro, that f-cked me up,” said Lana. “Like I was, first of all, shook. Never in a million years would I have thought he would have been fired before I did. Never. And that place makes you feel that way. That place makes you feel that men are more important than women. That place makes you feel, especially if you’re a manager or a valet, you’re secondary. And yeah maybe you are secondary. But I do feel like I was a big part of his success. And I think I’m a big part of his success behind closed doors at AEW. So when he got fired, I was beyond devastated.”
Specifically, Lana described that she struggled after Miro left WWE because she was on her own, and the COVID-19 pandemic worsened this solitude. She also noted how the pandemic’s effects on WWE diminished the feeling that the company had been a community. Still, Lana emphasized that despite these difficulties, she refused to quit no matter what.
“I didn’t even know, and with the combination of the pandemic and not knowing what the world was gonna hold, I just remember, I would text Becky [Lynch] a lot and Becky’s just like, ‘you can do it, you’re a strong woman,'” said Lana. “But no one really understood why it was so much harder, too, except if you were there. Because the business completely changed.
“…There’s not even a viewing area. There’s no sense of camaraderie over there. There’s literally no viewing, and it’s just like you come and you go. The sense of community isn’t there. So there was a lot of lonely nights for me, and that was really hard for me because I was used to spending the last seven years of my life with my best friend [Miro]. But I was determined that I was not gonna quit. They weren’t gonna get me to quit, no one was gonna get me to quit. No nine tables was gonna get me to quit.”
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