Charlie (formerly known as Dakota Kai in WWE) discussed her WWE releases in a recent interview. Dakota Kai was released from her WWE contract last year on May 2, 2025. She was part of Damage CTRL before leaving the company.
Earlier this year, Kai made her return to the ring in the independent circuit under the ring name, Charlie. Her first match took place during EVE Wrestle Queendom VIII, where she took on Kris Statlander for the EVE Intercontinental Championship. Kai couldn’t win the title in this match. Since then, Kai has worked one more match in the indies. The wrestler was recently interviewed by Chris Van Vliet, where she discussed getting released from WWE in 2022 and 2025. She explained why her current release shocked her.
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Dakota Kai Says Recent WWE Release Was Shocking To Her
Dakota Kai recalls that back in 2022, when she first got released, she was back in the company in a few months, and she kind of forgot it ever happened in the first place. But last year’s release was shocking to her because she had been getting more television time.
“It’s so crazy because in 2022, I got re-signed with the company within three months. So that felt different. With this one here. It almost felt like I, especially with the IC Championship tournament, it felt like we were doing this, you know, I’m getting more opportunities. So it was more of a shock, I guess. But that’s kind of why I need to take the step back, just for me and emotionally, and things like that. So, yeah, 2022 didn’t really even feel like it was that long at all. So I kind of forget that happened, because then SummerSlam came around and that was all last-minute.”
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In January 2025, Kai suffered a concussion. She wrestled her final match against Ivy Nile on Main Event. In May, WWE released Dakota Kai along with several other members of the roster.
During the same interview, Kai discussed her current wrestling status. She said, despite speculation from people, she’s not retired. In WWE, Dakota Kai won several championship belts. She’s a former two-time NXT Women’s Tag Team Champion as well as a two-time WWE Women’s Tag Team Champion.
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Main image credit: Diego Serrano, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ishaan Sharma has been following wrestling ever since he was 8. That was over a decade ago. He loves to write about this pretend sport and has worked with online publications such as Sportskeeda and TheSportster, where he shared his insights about the wrestling business.