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Dakota Kai is now at the forefront of the NXT women's division with her recent altercations with Rhea Ripley, Mia Yim, Tegan Nox, and others. However, she was sidelined for the majority of the year with an ACL injury (suffered during a live event in December 2018) returned to action in September.
In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Dakota Kai shed some light on her road to recovery and revealed how she had never experienced such a fatal injury before. Kai mentioned that the hiatus helped her to focus on her wrestling career and how to make a bigger impact upon her eventual return to the Black and Gold brand.
The main thing for me was that when I came back, I wanted to show everyone, and myself, another side of me. I wanted people to see Dakota Kai in a new light. That was the driving force for me.
Dakota also talked about her rehab days and that she had doubts regarding her in-ring career recovery.
I thought that it would take a while to get used to the knee brace, but that was easy, too. If anything, I feel a lot stronger than I did before.
AEW vs NXT
Since October 2nd, USA Network's NXT has been receiving some viewership competition with AEW Dynamite that airs at the same time on TNT. In this regard, Kai pointed out that the NXT roster barely pays any attention to the viewership numbers and prefers to focus on their "own stuff".
At the end of the day, we just want to elevate wrestling for everyone. So it’s good for everyone to have that competition. It only elevates everyone, and we’re going to keep bringing the best professional wrestling we have to offer.
