Carmella hopeful for WWE return: ‘I miss performing’
Carmella still plans on returning to the ring someday, but for now, she’s happy being a mom at home.
It’s been 22 months since she performed inside a wrestling ring. In November 2023, Carmella gave birth to her first child with husband, Corey Graves. She was in labor for more than 60 hours and developed “drop foot,” a condition that can result from childbirth characterized by herniated discs in the back pressing on nerves in the foot.
Carmella recently spoke with Bayley on Instagram Live and gave an update on her condition. She’s still dealing with drop foot but hopes to return to the ring once her nerves heal.
“Being a mom is the best thing I’ve ever done, like better than WWE. No offense, WWE,” she said.
“I love being a mom, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done ever in my whole entire life but that being said, of course, I miss WWE. Of course, I miss everyone. I miss being Carmella. I miss performing. I miss it so much. I wish I had an update for you guys. For those who don’t know, I have some nerve damage in my foot from delivering Dimitri. I have what’s called drop foot, and it’s like this nerve behind your knee. I’ve been dealing with all of that.”
“It sucks, but I wrestled for 10, 11, 12 years and I never had an injury, knock on wood, that was like this. Now, I’m just doing physical therapy, going to see the chiropractor, getting MRIs, and doing all of this stuff I never thought I would be doing. Here we are, and hopefully, eventually, nerves do take a lot of time to heal, but eventually, we’ll get back to it for sure.”
Carmella first tried out for WWE in 2010 but ended up moving to Los Angeles and working as a Laker Girl and a New England Patriots cheerleader before signing with WWE in 2013. In addition to wrestling with the company, she also had roles on Total Divas and Total Bellas. She says the last two years have allowed her to slow down.
“Honestly, it forced me to slow down. I never really had a break from WWE other than maybe two or three months when we were first in the pandemic, I wasn’t on TV but other than that, I never really had a break. It was just go, go, go for 10 straight years so I feel like this made me slow down and just appreciate the little things in life.”
Carmella is Bayley’s first guest in the video below: