Mickie James On How Her WWE Return Came About, Austin Aries Undergoes Surgery

Former WWE Women’s Champion Mickie James is set to return when she faces Asuka at NXT Takeover: Toronto on November 19. This will be Mickie’s first match in a WWE ring in several years, and she recently spoke to WWE.com about her highly anticipated return. You can check out the interview here along with a few highlights below.

How her WWE return came about: “I was sitting in the airport in Orlando, Florida, on my way to the UK, where I’ve been for almost a month now. I got the call from WWE and they asked me if I was interested. I know who Asuka is, I’ve seen her work in Japan and NXT. She is incredibly talented. It’s cool to see someone come up and make an impact. I think for her, it’s even harder, because there’s the language barrier. But she’s this mystical kind of person.”

“For them to even consider me to come back and face her and, hopefully, tear the house down, is pretty awesome. It made me feel like a million bucks. I want to go in there and take it to the next level and give the people everything that they want and more.”

Her thoughts on Asuka: “I think she’s fascinating. She has such an amazing presence. That’s one of those things you can’t teach people. Then, she gets it done in the ring. I know she had her own promotion in Japan and was very successful, so successful that she didn’t necessarily need come to WWE. But she’s smart enough to recognize that if she wanted to be the kind of star she wanted to be, like a household name, she had to come to WWE. I feel like she’s the complete package now, as a performer, artist and wrestler.”

As noted, Austin Aries suffered a large orbital fracture during a tag team match at a recent NXT live event and he’s out of action until early 2017. Aries recently underwent surgery, and he posted the following photos of himself before and after the operation.