Sonya Deville on Her Contract Negotiations with WWE Being “The Numbers We Were Talking Were Very Humble”

As noted before, Sonya Deville, real name Daria Berenato, was released from WWE this past February as part of a larger batch of talent releases. Deville’s departure specifically was due to WWE not renewing her contract and letting it expire instead.

A recent episode of the Busted Open Radio podcast featured Deville as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Deville’s thoughts about her initial reaction when she learned that her contract with WWE would not be renewed.

“That’s the weird part. I’m all for a release when you’ve been sat home for two, three months, you kind of feel it coming, you feel that knot in your stomach and you’re waiting for the Connecticut number to come up on your phone. But that wasn’t the case. We were featured heavily in the Royal Rumble, my faction, PFC. We had a great showing, and it was booked that way. So I really had no idea, and we were in the middle of negotiating for a new contract because mine was coming to its expiration. So everything was seemingly going good. So yeah, I was definitely shocked.”

Deville also gave her thoughts about how her contract negotiations with WWE were for numbers that were “very humble.”

“I’d like to preface this with, when we were in negotiations, it was not a scenario where I was like, I’m worth $5 million dollars and they came back with, ‘Screw you.’ The numbers we were talking were very humble. I know what all the other women get paid, we all talk, and so it wasn’t anything like that. It was very much so just the end of a contract, let’s talk about what’s next. I kind of knew my worth and where I stood on the card at that moment and asked for [it] accordingly.”

Deville also gave her thoughts about her issues with WWE’s booking of her Pure Fusion Collective group with Shayna Baszler and Zoey Stark.

“I felt like there could have been a more clear direction in where we were going and what we could have done and what we could have brought to the table. I saw P.F.C. working kind of only under one umbrella and I saw it working — we were three chicks that were fed up with the system, anti-authority, that were gonna just kick ass and take names and that doesn’t mean winning every match by any means. It was just more, like, let’s beat people up backstage. Let me be more like the puppeteer and manipulator behind the scenes because of my history as G.M. and everything. I thought that would be a cool angle. But let’s just, like, mess people up. That’s what I saw it being.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com, PostWrestling.com