Paige's unique WWE journey: British star sits down with Sky Sports to discuss her career
Sunday 4 November 2018 12:59, UK
Paige says she knew retirement was inevitable from the very moment she injured her neck at the back end of 2017.
After a kick from Sasha Banks in a tag match - an innocuous move both parties had done hundreds of times before - Paige spilled forward and lost the feeling in her arms and legs.
Memories of that Boxing Day house show at Madison Square Garden are never far away for the British star, and they came flooding back when WWE was back in the New York area for Evolution, the first all-women's pay-per-view and one from which Paige would be sadly missing.
Sky Sports sat down with the hugely popular pioneer of women's wrestling for a long interview, and she reflected on the moment her career ended.
"I knew when I was laying in the ring that I was never going to wrestle again," she said. "You can tell, I could just feel it.
"I was paralysed. I knew I wasn't coming back from it, but I was stubborn about it. I tried to say I was fine and then I got back to the hotel and fans were asking; I couldn't say to them they'd never see me wrestle again.
"I'd wanted to do it since I was 13 so to have it cut short at 26 is the saddest thing ever."
Click on the video at the top of the page to watch the interview in full and hear Paige open up about her start in wrestling at the age of 13 and how she was travelling abroad to compete within just a year of beginning her career.
She also discusses her move to America at 19 and how homesick she was - which included a unique solution from her father - and how she felt like a "little girl" in a very different culture to the one she was accustomed to.
Despite being retired at just 26, Paige fitted a lot into her all-too-brief in-ring career and continues to delight her fans as the SmackDown general manager.
But it will always remain one of the saddest 'what-might-have-been' stories in wrestling.
