Sonya Deville looks back on her 2023 knee injury.
Just days after winning the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships alongside Chelsea Green, Sonya Deville confirmed that she had sustained a knee injury that would keep her out of action for many months. The injury in question was a torn ACL that Deville suffered in a July 28, 2023, SmackDown tag match against Charlotte Flair and Bianca Belair.
During a recent interview on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, Deville recalled the series of events that unfolded after she tore her ACL mid-match.
“I knew something was wrong. It felt a little weird,” Deville said. “My knee buckled and I was like, ‘Oh, that was weird, but I’m fine.’ I have eight minutes left in this match. We’re about to go to a commercial break. I need to get it together. So I tagged out to Chelsea, and I got on the apron. Luckily, we’re in a commercial break. So I was like alright, let me sus out the situation. I’m hopping on the apron. Anyone in the live audience was probably like, ‘What the heck is she doing?’ I’m hopping up in down on the apron trying to gauge if I can trust my knee. Sure enough, it was sketchy at best. I was like, ‘Oh God, well, I’m in a match with Bianca, Charlotte, Chelsea, it’s a tag match, no less. I’m not about to change the entire match right now on live TV.'”
“So I was getting the comeback run on me and I had another eight minutes to wrestle. So I was like, we just got to do this,'” Deville continued. “Chelsea tagged me in for the hot tag. I had two comebacks ran on me. We did some falsies, I think a superplex. And the whole time I was like, ‘Oh my God, I hope I don’t fall flat on my face.’ And sure enough, we made it to the end and I limped back, I got my rental car, went to my hotel, tried to pretend like it didn’t happen, because in this business, no one wants to be injured and out of play. I just won my first title. I was so sad, I was like, It’s fine. It’s just a sprain, I’ll wrap it.”
Unfortunately for Deville, her injury turned out to be much more serious than a sprain. While back at her hotel, Deville arose in the midnight hours to use the restroom. As she walked through the room, however, Deville collided face-first into one of the walls. It was at this moment Deville realized that knee was severely damaged, specifically torn.
After a long recovery, Deville made her return to WWE television on the May 20 episode of WWE Raw.
READ MORE: Sonya Deville Returns On 5/20 WWE RAW
