Back in 2010, Celeste Bonin signed with WWE and she went on to debut on WWE programming as Kaitlyn. She remained with the company for a few years until she decided to part ways with WWE and walk away from wrestling in 2014.
While talking about her WWE departure on TMZ’s Inside The Ring, Celeste Bonin revealed that she still had two years left on her WWE contract, but she decided to leave the company because she was struggling with the lifestyle.
“When I left, I had signed my second contract when I had the title in 2013 and I ended up asking for my release with still two years left on my contract. And it’s because I was struggling, I was folding under the pressure of show business and the adrenaline and the emotional roller coaster and also that lifestyle, especially the way it was back then was very difficult to have real relationships like intimate relationships.”
“I was there from when I was 23 to when I was 27, I didn’t have tools to process what I was going through and I didn’t know how to talk about it. So essentially it kind of built to this point in my life where I was struggling mentally, physically, I was gaining weight, emotionally, I was a mess. And I knew that I couldn’t sustain that. Like my life was reflecting to me like ‘hey you need to figure this out, you need to make some changes’. And I didn’t feel like I could do that while I was living that lifestyle. And I was also, I had lost a lot of confidence in myself and I didn’t want to get released and so I left and I was a mess. I was an absolute mess. Didn’t have a plan.”
Ultimately Kaitlyn did end up returning to WWE in 2018 when she competed in the Mae Young Classic, and she recently shared her thoughts on another potential return to WWE, which you can read about here.