A few months after returning to the independents following her surprising release from WWE’s NXT brand, Elayna Black (fka Cora Jade) announced she was taking a break from the pro wrestling business altogether as it was having a negative impact on her mental health.
The decision couldn’t have been an easy one. A lifelong fan of the artform/business, it meant putting her childhood dream on hold — or possibly aside for good — and cancelling some bookings, potentially letting down promoters and fans in the process.
Still, those folks would all be let down if Black pushed past the warning signs her body, brain, and spirit were giving her.
The 24-year-old credits her wrestling dad* CM Punk for helping her realize that. She told TMZ’s Inside the Ring podcast:
“[Punk is] another person I go to for anything.
”Like, he’s one of the people that, honestly, because I told you I was going back and forth for a few weeks… I knew I needed to take a break. I was just scared to do it because I didn’t want to let anybody down. I was scared of the backlash. I was scared of promoters who had already booked the show, and I just didn’t want to let anybody down and I was putting everybody else before me. That just tends to be how I am. Like, I put other people’s feelings ahead of mine. And for once, I just had to kind of realize I needed to put my feelings first. But it was so hard. It didn’t matter how many people said that to me and agreed with me and were telling me all these things.
“But I like broke down one day and we had a conversation, me and [Punk] on the phone. Because I was like, hey, I need your advice — because he’s been through it all. He left WWE for 10 years and hated WWE, said crazy things, and nobody ever thought he was coming back. He’s found his love for wrestling again. He’s helped me with everything. So I always know that I can come to him. But specifically this thing, I was like, I know he’s going to have good insight for me and give me a good outlook on it — and he did. And he sat there and listened to me. And he’ll always listen to me, which I’m very grateful for because I’m someone who sometimes acts — I get very passionate, so sometimes I want to act on emotion. But he is very good at helping me see things from like a different side without the emotional aspect of it. And from experience, obviously, like I just said, he left WWE forever.
“So I was just asking him if he found his love for it again after the break and stuff like that. And so many things that he said to me in that conversation really helped me. And he told me, like, I don’t owe anybody anything and I don’t have to stick in something that’s no longer serving me. And that really stuck with me.”
The advice already seems to be paying off. Black has a signing appearance she’s kept for Wrestlecade in November, and while she says she won’t hold herself to it, would love to be back in the ring by the end of the year or early 2026.
“I have no plans on retiring, I’m taking this break.
“If I wouldn’t have taken this break, maybe I would have retired because I would have went nuts and run off the rails and I couldn’t have done it, but that’s why I’m taking the break, because I do love wrestling and I do want to have fun again and enjoy it and not just be upset about it all the time or feel like constant negativity about it. I want to love it again the way I did as a kid. I want to feel that again. And so I feel like even now, I already miss it and I’ve only taken like a month off, so I’m sick in the head like all wrestlers [laughs].”
Check out Elayna Black’s entire appearance on Inside The Ring here.
