Mia Yim is back in IMPACT Wrestling amongst some of her best friends and she revealed that with such support is why she decided to come back to wrestling. Yim returned to IMPACT during their Under Siege event and recently sat down with Denise Salcedo to talk about re-signing with her old company. A great deal of her happiness came with the freedom to express herself and IMPACT showed that to her right away.
“The minute that I signed my contract I got a text like, ‘Hey, what do you want to do for your character? What do you want to do for your tron?'” Yim said, who found that to be so rewarding.
“The fact that they straight up asked me what I wanted to do says a lot and then the fact that they actually went about and did it it was like, I want to retire at IMPACT. This is like where I want to stay forever at this point so it was definitely a different feeling, but I felt like I was being heard and listened to and they really took my ideas, even little tweaks and they asked, ‘Hey, how would you feel about this?” And I was like, ‘You’re really asking me?’ So it’s nice to feel like I’m respected as a human, you know?”
Salcedo asked Yim what the process was like for determining her next step. Did it involve wrestling? Yim stated how it was a whirlwind of thoughts, but she married Keith Lee, who went to work for AEW, and bought a house. She knew she had a lot of at-home work to do. She however, always stayed in communication with IMPACT Hall Of Famer, Gail Kim.
“I took a couple months to do things in my real life but also to figure out if this was what I wanted to continue to do. It was a lot, it was a lot. I’m close friends with Gail and I’ve been talking to her ever since I left IMPACT the first time.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do but Gail was putting over the company, putting over the talent, even Scott [D’Amore].”
Yim had full confidence that she would be in good hands with Kim steering the ship of the Knockouts division.
“With Gail being in the position of IMPACT as like the head of the women’s division, it’s like I have no question, no second guesses, no hesitation that if I were to go to IMPACT under Gail’s leadership like everything’s going to be fine. There’s no drama. I didn’t want to deal with drama, no politics. If I was going to wrestle, I just wanted to wrestle and hang out with my friends.
“It was a no-brainer for me to finally just be like, ‘I’m going to give it one more try.’ I don’t want people to remember me what I’ve done the past year or two. I want people to remember me as Mia Yim that I had a decade worth of work under my belt before I had the whole thing happened and I want people to remember that, that like I’m not just a manager for a group or whatever.”
“I know that IMPACT, I’m gonna be okay,” she said. Mia didn’t just have support from IMPACT colleagues, but noted how influencial some of her former WWE colleagues were in keeping her motivated. Shelton Benjamin in particular.
“I know I bust Shelton’s balls all the time, but like him, and Keith and even like [Mustafa] Ali, I got a lot of support and even Shelton was like, ‘Don’t let them define you. Go do what you’re known to do.’ It was just having the support of others like kind of pushing me because if it wasn’t for them I probably wouldn’t even be back.”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
You can check out the full conversation below:
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