Saraya listened to Triple H’s offer (Picture: AEW)

All Elite Wrestling star Saraya has revealed Triple H was ‘very open’ to the idea of her wresting again in WWE despite her shock departure.

The 30-year-old star, best known to WWE fans as Paige, left the company last summer when the Vince McMahon regime decided not to renew her contract, and she would later join Tony Khan’s rival promotion AEW before making her return to in-ring action five years after suffering a career-ending injury.

Reflecting on her conversation with WWE boss Triple H, real name Paul Levesque, before joining AEW, she exclusively told Metro.co.uk: ‘Man, I do love Hunter, he’s so fantastic. He was like, “Wait what happaned?!”

‘I was like, “I dunno, they haven’t renewed my contract”. He was like, “Oh my gosh! Well I didn’t know that, so I’m sorry!” He was really fantastic.

‘He did give me the opportunity to potentially be a GM again, and give me the opportunity to be like, “If you ever potentially want to wrestle again, I’ll give you that opportunity too”. He was very open about any ideas that I had.’

However, Saraya had been keeping her eye on AEW for a while and she admitted for anyone in WWE it would’ve been hard to ignore the work been done even as an admirer from afar.

Triple H wanted Saraya to return (Picture: WWE)

She laughed: ‘When AEW started you’re kinda like, “ooh, what’s going on over there?” It’s like the movie, the bad boy with a leather jacket and a cigarette, kinda cruising in the background like, “Who’s that bad boy?”

‘You’re definitely intrigued by the company! Just seeing how quickly in three years that it’s built – I’m like, this company! You have the bad, tribal fans, but whether you like them or not you can’t fault how amazing it is to become another goliath company like that.’

She pointed out how it’s a great thing for the wrestling world as a whole to have ‘another company where wrestlers can go and have TV time’ on a large scale.

Saraya made her in-ring comeback in November (Picture: AEW)

‘There’s another big stage and I feel like that’s so amazing, I don’t understand why people get so upset by that. AEW’s a goliath company, this is huge, this is amazing,’ she added. ‘I wanted to be here for a while and then WWE, the contract was expiring, which was fine.’

It was between her WWE exit and AEW debut that Triple H got in touch, and she found herself with a decision to make.

‘Do I wanna go back to WWE or do I want to go to AEW? Seeing Renee, she’s one of my best friends, and Mox as well, and Jericho, they were all calling me,’ she explained, noting that the freedom to take outside opportunities was ‘the thing that maybe tipped the scale’.

On the flipside, Saraya was ‘scared’ at the idea of going back to WWE and finding herself in a similar position to the end of her tenure where she would be ‘sitting on [her] arse’ for years without being able to pursue other options.

‘I know Triple H is fantastic, and he’s an awesome boss and I know that because I worked with him in NXT. He’s still half the boss, and the other half is the Nick [Khan] guy right, who I haven’t met yet,’ she said.

‘I don’t know if I would end up sitting on my arse for another five years, and that terrified me. And then not being able to do other projects terrified me. I can’t sit on my butt again and do nothing!

‘I can’t ask to go and do this and that and be told no again. I needed my freedom, and Tony was willing straight out of the gate to give that to me. “Just come to work when you’re supposed to come to work”. OK, absolutely, I can do that!’

She also pointed to the possibility of her brother Zak Zodiak getting a shot on one of AEW’s online shows to give him a chance to make it in the US, and heaped praise on Tony as a boss.

‘He’s such an easy laid back boss,’ she beamed. ‘If you have an idea, he’s like, “If we don’t do it this week, we’ll do it in the next couple of weeks, we’ll do that idea”, and he will do it.

‘I love that about him. And he’s always there, even though he’s running an NFL team and Fulham Football Club. Even if you text him, even if he takes a couple of hours he will always get back to you. I’m just really grateful to be in the place that I am now.’

AEW Dynamite airs Wednesday nights at 1am on Fite TV.

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The former Divas Champion had options despite her departure.