Three days away from her retirement match, former TNA Knockout Taylor Wilde (Shantelle Taylor) speaks to Diva Dirt about her retirement, her final match with Alissa Flash and much more. Highlights below:
On arriving at the decision to retire: "It's been a long time coming. I kind of made this pact when I started professional wrestling that essentially, if it wasn't something that I wasn't rolling in as far as it being lucrative and if it wasn't something I could see myself doing through my entire life, something I could retire on, I was going to hang up my boots at 25. So it was pretty much a business decision, if anything."
Whether it was coincidence that both she and Hamada left at the same time despite being Knockouts Tag Team Champions: "Yeah. Actually I found out that Hamada was fired or that Hamada had left the company when you all did. When it became a story on the Internet. I was in shock. It was an interesting ordeal. I decided to retire and she decided to quit so it just so happens that we were a tag team in the ring but mentally, we were on the same page too."
On her retirement match with Alissa Flash: "It really seems like things have come full circle. When I first started wrestling, SHIMMER was the big promotion around and probably one of the biggest shows I did a year and a half into my training and my match was booked to be against Cheerleader Melissa aka Alissa Flash. It was a big, nerve wracking moment for me. Further on, I had my tryout match with her for TNA so we have a lot of history and we've spent a lot of time in the ring together, so it'll be fun to finish with her."
Revealing exclusively what her next step in life is: "I got accepted into the pre-firefighting service at Humber College in Toronto and I'm on my way to being a firefighter. I'm not gonna sit behind a desk in a cubicle. I have to do something physical. At least this way, I'll be giving back and I'll be of benefit to society."
Other topics in the interview include whether she'd rule out a return to wrestling, her run in TNA including her thoughts on the Knockouts division back in 2008 when she debuted versus now, whether she was frustrated over the past year in TNA and more. Shantelle also touches on her time in WWE, working for developmental territory Deep South Wrestling and her stint competing in dark matches as masked 'male' wrestler San-Eye.
