Former WWE talent Sonya Deville was the most recent guest on the Chris Van Vliet podcast. On there, she talks about her match from SummerSlam 2020 which was right after the traumatic stalker/break-in incident that happened in her Florida home. The match was a Loser Leaves WWE No DQ match in which she faced Mandy Rose in a losing effort.
Watching as a fan, most probably figured this was a way to give Deville some time off. For Deville, she says she expected to be much so much sooner.
“And then, the ‘Loser Leaves’ happens and I’m not needed for TVs, like, one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, a month, two months, like, all this time’s going by and I’m texting Bruce (Prichard), I’m texting Vince (McMahon). I’m like, ‘Hey guys, what’s the deal? I thought I was coming back right after.’ It’s the only reason I agreed to lose was because we had this cool angle to come back and bring me back, and they were like, ‘Eh… Hang tight, hang tight, hang tight,’ and then all of a sudden, finally Bruce says, ‘You know, after second thought, when we do a loser leaves, we have to honor the stipulation. So you have to stay gone for a while,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, well, why didn’t you tell me that when we discussed this? And I would have much rather have won then…’ I don’t have many regrets in life but, booking myself to lose that match is probably my only one, and it was like a running joke when I came back in the writers’ room, with like, the head writers. They kind of busted my chops and were like, ‘Remember that time you booked yourself to lose a match when we were trying to push you?…’ So much you don’t know behind the scenes because you’re not having these conversations like, hey, when you win this one, we’re gonna push you… She’s (Mandy Rose) gonna go in a different direction, you’re gonna go in a different direction. So it wasn’t that transparent, so I didn’t really know what I was doing to myself at the time. So I ended up sitting home for five months.” (Fightful/Transcript)
When Deville did return, she entered into an authority role.