Mental health remains close to the hearts of Joseline Navarro and Elayna Black.
Last week, former WWE star Elayna Black revealed that she’d be on a hiatus from pro wrestling for the foreseeable future in order to take care of her mental health. Black further noted that she intends to be out of action until the end of 2025, at which point she will more concretely decide what her future in wrestling looks like.
One of Black’s most recent matches took her to Absolute Intense Wrestling in Ohio, where she defeated Joseline Navarro. Following that, AIW announced Black for a four-way match against Navarro, Katie Arquette, and Priscilla Kelly at Absolution on July 18. A family emergency, however, prevented her from making it, resulting in the match being altered to a triple threat.
During an interview with WrestleZone’s Ella Jay, Navarro weighed in on Black’s recent announcement as well as the missed opportunity at AIW. No matter what the circumstances, Navarro encourages all wrestlers to make their health a priority.
“I am a big advocate on people taking care of their health, whether it be physical, emotional, mental health, spiritual health,” she said. “You have to take care of you because nobody is living your life. You are living your life and you have to be happy in whatever you do. And if you’re not good mentally, that’s going to affect everything that you do. So when I seen that she was taking a break for mental health, I was like ‘good for her,’ because wrestling will definitely drag your mental health through the mud.
“No matter where you are in wrestling, you could be at the tippy top, you could be Roman Reigns, you could be just starting, but wrestling will test your mental health. It was great, very brave, very honest of her to say, ‘Hey, I’m not in the best place to be wrestling right now. so I got to take a break from this.’ That’s what people should do. More people should do that.”
Navarro Reflects On Her Singles Match Experience With Elayna Black
Regarding her singles match experience with Black at AIW Kash Rules Everything Around Me, Navarro noted that it was nothing but positive. Now looking ahead, she hopes they meet again.
“She was very easy to work with. She’s very nice … She was very easy to work with, very fun to work with,” Navarro said. “We had a great match. We had a great time. I enjoyed working with her and sad to see that she had to pull out of Absolution because we were supposed to have a four-way there and she was supposed to be involved in that. I was sad that she wasn’t there, but she was very easy to work with. Whenever she plans to come back, we could always have another match.”
AIW Kash Rules Everything Around Me emanated from the Tadmore Shrine in Akron, Ohio on June 21.
Watch our full interview with Joseline Navarro below:
