Leyla Hirsch opened up about her AEW departure, expressing deep frustration with how creative plans repeatedly fell through and how she ultimately felt overlooked and undervalued, despite giving her all.
She recalled the excitement around planning a meaningful story for her Final Battle match, saying, “We wanted to come up with a story to make it mean more… Me and Red came up with a storyline that we thought would be great. We pitched it to Tony [Khan]… they absolutely loved it. I got my excitement back.” But things quickly unraveled. Hirsch explained, “One of the ideas was that we would wrestle… in my hometown… One week before, I found out it wasn’t happening. That broke me.” Despite putting energy into building something compelling, she felt it was dismissed: “Just to know it was taken away from us… that broke me. I was like, ‘Man, nothing I do here is going to matter.'”
The missed opportunities became even more painful when she saw male colleagues get to execute similar ideas. “What hurt the most is the ideas that I had and pitched, the guys were able to do it… To me, it’s frustrating because the females don’t really have a lot of storylines. It’s such a fight.” This led her to a breaking point: “It didn’t matter. I tried. I want the fans to know that I tried in Ring of Honor… but you’re not getting that back.”
As her contract neared its end, she hoped for clarity: “I went six weeks prior… to have a talk with Tony… I just wanted to talk, ‘Hey, if I stay, what would be the plan?'” Instead, she never got to speak to him directly: “Somebody told him what I wanted to talk to him about. I never ended up talking to him.” Though the conversation with legal was respectful, she was left hanging: “They told me I would hear from them in the first week of February. Ultimately, I didn’t hear anything from them.”
The delay in communication only added to her disappointment: “They waited until less than two weeks to tell me they weren’t going to re-sign me… I went six weeks early just so I could have a plan.” Still, she stood by her approach: “I don’t have any regrets. I did everything on my part and was very professional… I’m always willing to bet on myself.” Though grateful for the people she met, she concluded, “At the end of the day, I’m just another number and it sucks… Just let me know ahead of time so I can prepare. It is what it is.”
Source: The Soul Sessions