Tenille Dashwood recounts WWE release being a ‘rough day’, expressing excitement for Elimination Chamber beforehand

Photo Courtesy: WWE

Dashwood figured she’d get a call about a release. 

In October of 2022, Tenille Dashwood a.k.a. Emma made her return to WWE. Her first match back was a SmackDown Women’s Championship bout. 

A year later in September, Dashwood was gone from WWE as she was part of a wave of releases. Dashwood and fellow former WWE talent Mike Rallis (Riddick Moss) sat down with Chris Van Vliet and dove into their releases. 

Prior to Dashwood getting the call about her release, she took to X to express how excited she was about Elimination Chamber taking place in her home country of Australia. She said a goal of hers was to do a big show in Australia. She added that when herself and Rallis began to hear about releases, they figured they were not safe. 

Dashwood: It was a rough day (getting released from WWE after expressing excitement for Elimination Chamber in Australia). I will say, since I returned to WWE, it was definitely a thought and a goal of mine to be able to do a big show in my home country, and even just to return there in general on a tour, and it’s something that I did ask many times about when I was there. When’s the next tour? Because they hadn’t been there for years because of all the lack of travel and the restrictions for years. But basically, I kept asking and I thought it wasn’t happening and then, so it was kind of a surprise when I saw that tweet that there was a show happening there. I still hadn’t been told by anyone so then I was like, wow and I just thought, what a dream to be able to wrestle there and then, throughout the next few hours or so, we started hearing that people were getting released and at that point, I mean, I can’t say that — we were basically expecting calls at that point. We were kind of in that position where we thought, we’re probably gonna get released and then we did so…

Rallis chimed in and stated that if Dashwood had gotten released and he didn’t, he would have felt guilty and probably would not have wanted to stay at WWE. 

Rallis: I’ll tell you, for me personally, I would have felt very guilty if it were me staying (at WWE). I probably wouldn’t have wanted to stay. If it was her (Tenille Dashwood) who was staying, I would have been totally fine with that. I would have been happy for her and I don’t — maybe she would feel the same way. I’m not sure but, I just felt like — and maybe for me, it’s partially the fact that, I mean obviously I didn’t get to do everything there is to do in the industry but, I had that year, year-and-a-half as Madcap that I felt pretty good about where I got to really express myself at least in this character and have a ton of fun with it. You have no idea how much fun I had as Madcap. It was just a great time and I got to do goofy stuff. I still got to wrestle in long matches against great opponents. I was just part of the team. I was a mainstay on the television show with a defined actual role and I felt good about that… I’m sure there’s literally — Roman Reigns probably feels he’s not used to his fullest potential and maybe he’s not, you know? It’s just like, that’s probably not going to happen for 99.9 percent of people. But I really felt like Tenille had so much more she could contribute and do and she just really never got the chance to do (it), especially this second time around. I definitely felt like I wish she had gotten more.

For a portion of their time together in WWE, Dashwood and Moss were featured on-screen together. The couple got married on March 8th in Hawaii. 

They got engaged in the summer of 2023 while they were a part of Monday Night Raw. 

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.

About Andrew Thompson 9794 Articles
A Washington D.C. native and graduate of Norfolk State University, Andrew Thompson has been covering wrestling since 2017.