— Former WWE ring announcer Samantha Irvin spoke with USA Today and discussed her departure from the promotion, explaining that she didn’t want to move forward in her career being typecast into a ring announcer role as she wanted to pursue her music and singing career:

“It just became more and more sad as time went on, because it’s like, ‘Wow, am I just not a singer anymore? Like, what am I doing?’ I know that I am a performer and being a ring announcer on WWE, it was the performance of a lifetime. But then when people stopped calling me for singing gigs, and now they’re asking me to announce everything, I said, ‘Oh no, I took it too far.’ “I was like, man, like, this cannot be forever.”

“I didn’t leave WWE to necessarily pursue anything specific. I just knew that I’m not a ring announcer, and I knew that if I continued going any longer, that was it. It was done. I could kiss any other thing that I wanted to do goodbye. I just need to be myself. That’s literally it.”

— Irvin, who was backstage at this week’s Dynamite with her partner Ricochet, indicated that she sees herself coming back to the industry at some point and is excited to work with him.

“That’s a guarantee. My wrestling career has barely even begun. I think it would be an absolute waste of everything that I’ve done so far to not continue the story. I gotta finish my story.”