It doesn’t work out in the WWE for everybody. Just ask former WWE Mae Young Classic competitor Zeda Zhang. Zhang participated in the first-ever Mae Young Classic tournament in 2017. She was recruited by WWE and trained in their Performance Center while making appearances on NXT.
Zhang is an extremely talented athlete. As a former mixed martial artist, she’s trained in disciplines such as boxing, jiu-jitsu, judo, muay thai, and more. She’s also a former model and singer, giving her a ton to work with when it comes to developing a character in WWE. However, Zhang found it very difficult to develop a gimmick while with the company. She explained the situation during her appearance on the “Women’s Wrestling Weekly” podcast:
“I don’t have the freedom of what kind of character I want to be. I can’t really test it out. They tell you when you wrestle and when you get to try things out, and they just tell you, “be yourself”. But the thing is everything that makes me is my background – my modelling, singing, dancing, music and MMA – and me just being Chinese in general.
“That’s what I am but when I was there, I can’t do the MMA thing because someone else has it, I can’t do the singing thing because someone else has it, can’t do the dancing thing cause someone else has it, can’t do the modelling thing because someone else has it, so I’m left with nothing.
“I can’t be Chinese either, they told me, I wasn’t allowed to be billed from China because it’s not true so because of that I was left with this heart gimmick.”
What do you make of Zhang’s comments?