The duo explained that their exits from the company were too fresh to accept the offer.
Last year, the duo of Jessica McKay and Cassie Lee, collectively known as The IInspiration, issued a joint statement to announce that they would be stepping away from in-ring competition. They were with IMPACT Wrestling at the time and were coming off a run with the Knockouts World Tag Team Titles.
In January 2023, Lee and Shawn Spears welcomed their baby boy into the world. Jessica McKay announced her pregnancy in June. On their ‘Off Her Chops’ podcast, Lee said they both wanted to take a step back from wrestling to venture into acting.
Lee added that she also wanted to start a family, but feels the transition out of wrestling was not the smoothest because they weren’t 100 percent honest about why they were stepping away. In that same vein, Lee stated that it’s not anyone’s business to know exactly why she wanted to take a break.
Lee: We wanted to take a step back because we both wanted to take a step forward with our acting aspirations and also, I had been trying to get pregnant for a f*cking long time at this point. I was like, I gotta work this out and I feel like maybe because I keep wrestling, it’s not happening because my body — I keep wrestling, and so, it was tough because it wasn’t a smooth transition out. Only because we weren’t super honest about that. Because if I’m being honest, I don’t think it’s anybody’s business. Hey, I wanna take a step back because I wanna get pregnant. That’s not anyone’s business. But what am I gonna say? You know? It’s tough.
As the conversation rolled on, McKay and Lee revealed that they were contacted by WWE and asked if they wanted to be in the 2022 women’s Royal Rumble. They were released from the company in April 2021 and both felt it was too fresh of a feeling to come back.
McKay shared that she loved being asked. Cassie said it was not a guaranteed opportunity and did not want to be the person who agrees to it just for it to be pulled away.
McKay: We did get asked to do the Royal Rumble.
Lee: Was that the same year? Was that 2022?
McKay: Yeah. Eight months after — eight or nine months after our release?
Lee: It was a little bit too fresh I think.
McKay: I think so too.
Lee: We certainly weren’t mentally prepared to go back into — it was too soon basically.
McKay: Too much at that time. I definitely loved getting asked. I thought that was nice.
Lee: It’s nice to be asked. It also wasn’t a guarantee so it was like, ah, I’m not gonna be the chump who says, yeah, I’ll do it and then they say, um, we don’t need you anymore. Okay, I’ll just go f*ck myself (she laughed).
McKay: The release, that took a while to kind of heal from that so… I do (feel healed now). It took a hot minute. I wanna say it probably took over a year.
Lee: Well it was our dreams come crashing down in front of our eyes without any sort of control so yeah, it takes time.
Their last match in IMPACT before stepping away was against Emma and Madison Rayne on the pre-show of the Rebellion pay-per-view. Lee said she was ‘technically’ pregnant going into the match.
Lee: And little fun fact, I was technically pregnant during that match (at Rebellion that) we had with Tenille (Dashwood) and Madison (Rayne). But, I’m gonna leave you on a cliffhanger and I’m not gonna get too much into the details of pregnancy until next episode.
This October, Cassie is returning to in-ring action for the World Series Wrestling promotion in her home country of Australia. She’ll be doing mixed tags with Shawn Spears.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Off Her Chops with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
