Zayda Steel could feel her passion diminishing.
The female star was one of the first names to get signed under the WWE ID program in November 2024, after the new development system was officially announced a month earlier in October. She wrestled matches for Evolve among other promotions as part of the ID system, but in October last year, the 22-year-old announced that she would not be renewing her ID deal.
During a recent appearance on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, the Moroccan-American star explained the decision to exit the WWE contract. Zayda Steel claimed that she chose to walk away because she wanted to be around people who love wrestling just as much as her:
So, I don’t know how much I can say, but I will say this: I chose to walk away from my previous employment by choice. I’m on my own journey. I love wrestling. I just want to be around people that love it just as much as I do. So I chose to walk away.
I Chose To Walk Away: Zayda Steel
Zayda Steel mentioned that her original plan was to take a couple of months off wrestling to give herself a mental break. She then would have loved to travel to Japan to do things the right way:
I love wrestling, like I said, and this is my escape from reality and once I started to feel like my only escape was work and I started to not like it and not have fun — I want to always love this, so I chose to walk away — as well as my mental.
Personally, I was losing myself. I was losing the love for wrestling, the only thing I’ve loved. So it was pretty quickly on that. I was like, ‘Yeah, I need to do my own thing.’
The young star had to abandon the idea for the overseas trip as she made her ROH debut at the Final Battle 2025 event in December and got signed by AEW shortly afterward. Steel revealed that she got a message from Tony Khan only 5 days after announcing her ID departure, thus beginning her AEW journey.
