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Elayna Black was one of the hottest free agents on the professional wrestling market when she left WWE in 2025.
Formerly known as Cora Jade in NXT, Black hit the independent circuit performing at places like Atomic Legacy Wrestling, Black Label Pro, and Game Changer Wrestling before taking some time off. Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) was an option for Black and she was very familiar with the company’s programming.
She told PK Press Club Digital that she grew up watching TNA and became a fan of Jeff Hardy and the women’s faction known as The Beautiful People.
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Elayna Black enters the ring at Slammiversary 2026. (TNA Wrestling)
“By the time I started watching TNA, Jeff Hardy was in the company,” Black said. “So, I was a big fan of Jeff Hardy… I started watching WWE first. At first, that was the only wrestling company I knew about. When you’re a kid, you don’t really know anything else. And then slowly I discovered TNA and you find out, oh, Jeff Hardy was in WWE and I was young, so I didn’t know. So, discovering Jeff Hardy was crazy because I was like, I loved wearing black nail polish and like I was entering my little emo phase at the time. So, I loved Jeff Hardy.
“But my all-time favorites were The Beautiful People, especially when it was all three of them back then. It was Angelina Love, Velvet Sky and Madison Rayne. They were like my gods. Nobody could tell me anything. I was going to be The Beautiful People. I was going to be in The Beautiful People. I remember my very first phone, like a flip phone, this little pink phone when I was in fifth grade that my parents gave me, the theme song from The Beautiful People was my very first ringtone. I emailed TNA when I was 12, trying to convince them to let me be the very first youngest member of the Beautiful People. Obviously they never responded, but here I am now and maybe one day they can go with me to the ring or something, we’ll see.
Black finally became one of TNA’s top talents in January.
She told PK Press Club Digital that she didn’t necessarily want to sign anywhere and was trying to do what was best for her.
“I think for a while I didn’t really want to sign anywhere,” she said. “Obviously, I knew that one day I wanted to be somewhere just because that’s what I love to do,” she said. “But I think for a while my mindset was just wanting to prove otherwise. And I was having a little fun on the indies, but life happens, personal things happened and I felt like I really needed to take a break just for my mental health. I started training wrestling when I was 15. I dropped out of high school to do it.
“The only time I had time off was because of an injury. So, that was my life forever. And growing up in wrestling is pretty tough too. So just taking the time for the first time really (I’m 25 now, so 10 years), to sit down and think after losing everything I had just worked for was probably the best thing I could have done. And taking that time, I was just kind of thinking about what would be the better for me.”
Black said she was initially hesitant to sign with TNA because of its partnership with WWE. She had just finished a run in WWE and initially thought she wanted to be able to do something on her own without WWE.
Elayna Black attempts to pin Indi Hartwell at Slammiversary 2026. (TNA Wrestling)
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But after recalibrating, she said she believed TNA had the best environment for her and offered her an opportunity to flourish.
“At first I was a little hesitant with TNA just because of the partnership with WWE. And that’s nothing against WWE at all. I loved my time there, but it comes back to me saying I wanted to prove myself somewhere else and I kind of wanted to be as far away from WWE at the time as possible just to prove who I was without them because I was there for so many years or a few years before that,” Black said. “Ultimately, it seemed like TNA had the best environment. I wanted to help bring TNA to the forefront and help TNA grow.
“They got this deal with AMC and I got a chance to be a part of the early days of AMC, which was great. But I wasn’t the one who built that. You know, I showed up from the early days. There were so many years of hard work to get TNA to the early days of AMC and everyone there is a hard worker and everyone loves wrestling and it’s very creatively free, which I think I wanted and needed to do to be able to get into the business. Challenge Being in WWE for a long time, they kind of “
Black credited TNA with bringing women’s wrestling to the forefront. Gone are the days of bra and panty matches or other types of risky angles. TNA grew its Knockouts division and helped make women’s wrestling more than just filler matches.
“I love the locker room. I think TNA has a great locker room environment in the women’s division. Not only that, but the women put on a hell of a performance every time,” she told PK Press Club Digital. “I think a lot of the time TNA maybe doesn’t get the credit it should for being ahead of its time with women, at least in my opinion. I think TNA was doing things that other companies weren’t doing with women for a long time in the beginning. I remember watching TNA when I was a kid and I even noticed that I wanted to do what the Knockouts were doing. They can do way cooler stuff and stuff like that.
Elayna Black performs for the crowd at Slammiversary 2026. (TNA Wrestling)
“So I think a lot of times TNA maybe doesn’t get the credit for bringing the Knockouts to the forefront early on and trying to show what they can do. So that’s something I’ve always wanted to be a part of. It’s something I’ve always noticed, even as a kid, that TNA puts a lot of faith in the women, which is great and something you don’t always see. I think TNA is a great place and a place where all women wrestlers should want to be because they really believe in women and I think women are amazing and we all push each other to be better.”
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Black is now a contender for the TNA Knockouts World Championship. She is one of the pillars of “Impact” every Thursday evening on AMC.
