Paige: Footage of brutal 2017 kick that forced ex-WWE star to retire at 25

Former WWE Superstar Paige, now going by Saraya, debuted for AEW this week during the special Grand Slam episode of Dynamite.

This came just hours after it was reported by Fightful Select that WWE’s new management team had interest in bringing back the former Divas Champion.

Saraya’s shock debut even portrayed her as a wrestler, something that she hasn’t been able to do since 2017.

The night after WrestleMania 34 in 2018, Paige announced that she had to retire due to a series of bad head and neck injuries, immediately becoming SmackDown General Manager afterwards.

What makes this story even more heartbreaking is that Paige had only returned to the ring in December 2017, just four months before her retirement, after over 18 months out of the ring with another injury.

The nail in the coffin for the former WWE Superstar came just three weeks after her return to the ring, where Paige suffered a kick to the back of the head from Sasha Banks during their match.

As you can see from the footage below, Paige immediately fell to the floor and was unable to use her legs to get up, with the referee also immediately calling off the match.

Here’s the kick from Sasha Banks that ended Paige’s WWE career at just 25 years old.Clearly this was an unfortunate accident, not Sasha’s fault. pic.twitter.com/RHoFzaBwpv

As you can see from the harrowing footage above, after taking the kick to the back of the head from Banks, it was clear that something was wrong.

As a result of the impact injury that she suffered, Paige was immediately put on the no-contact list, with various medical tests from experts over the next few months ruling the Englishwoman out of competing ever again.

Interestingly enough, reports from the Wrestling Observer state that