Tenille Dashwood, formerly known as Emma, sat down with her original trainer Lance Storm on this week’s Killing the Storm podcast for her first interview since being released by WWE. After three months away from wrestling, her non-compete contract has officially expired and she’s excited to dig back into the independent wrestling scene for the first time in years.

Dashwood’s return to the ring happened last weekend at the WrestlePro: Brace for IMPACT event in New Jersey, and will air completely free this Friday night on the IMPACT Wrestling Twitch channel.

On the freedom of returning to the indies: 

“That’s what making me so nervous. It’s been years since I’ve worked on the independent scene; probably about six years now. There is that freedom of being in control. Not having to worry about times on TV and limitations in your character and storyline as much. I love going out there and being able to perform and to wrestle, and enjoy it.”

Lance credits Dashwood and Paige for helping start the WWE women’s revolution:

“Thank you. I think obviously there’s been so [many]amazing accomplishments from all the women over the years. Since then it’s just built and built and built, and I loved watching all of that. We all as a group wanted to show what we could do. We were given that chance, and we just did everything we could to make sure that we delivered.”

Did Dashwood ever actually know where the “Emmalina” gimmick was going?

“No. I wish I had more to say. I don’t know, I guess there was an idea to it, but they kind of realized along the way that that wasn’t me. That wasn’t for me at all. I’m just not a Diva, you know? I’m not like that at all. I just want to wrestle, so I think they kind of realized that along the way or something, and were like ‘let’s just have her be Emma.’ And we were able to bring that back around.”

 

While no specifics were given at this time, Tenille noted that she would be touring Australia and New Zealand in the upcoming months and had a few “big plans” for WrestleMania week in New Orleans.

Follow Tenille on Twitter @TenilleDashood for all her upcoming appearances.