Ex‑WWE Superstar Carmella Explains Why She Left the Ring
Bernadette Giacomazzo
From the outside, Leah Van Dale’s run as the flamboyant Carmella looked like every aspiring wrestling superstar’s dream: memorable catchphrases, championship belts, and sparkly gear for days. But on Come Together with Abe and Erin Lichy, the former WWE superstar reveals the reality behind the rhinestones and tells a very different story: one in which maternity, injury, and a surprise phone call collide to end an eleven-year career.
Wrestling, as a business, is known for its predation on its talent. Even the marquee superstars who earn millions of dollars a year for the company are considered contract employees, not full-timers. (They are, for lack of a better way of putting it, well-paid freelancers.) This means they receive no health insurance (though high-end promotions like the WWE provide medical treatment for in-ring injuries), no unemployment benefits (the paycheck dries up when the contract is renewed), and no job security.
For a young, single woman with no children, such things don’t register. But for would-be mothers, the prospect can be scary.
Van Dale’s story captures how a dancer-turned-wrestler wound up saying goodbye to the squared circle and hello to a new life built around motherhood and her women’s health platform, Snatch.
From dance floors to championship gold
“I was a dancer my whole life. I danced since I was three, and then I got into cheerleading and cheered for the Patriots, and then I was a Laker girl,” Van Dale explains. That résumé took a sharp turn when an agent suggested she try out for a sports entertainment career. “I got a tryout for WWE [and] I made it,” she exclaims.
Once the bell rang, she wasted no time stacking accolades. “I won—I was a SmackDown Women’s Champion. I was a tag team champion,” she remembers. And yes, she walked away (mostly) in one piece, unlike many of her peers: “Knock on wood. Never anything serious, [just] a couple concussions.”
The moment the bell stopped ringing
But that enviable injury record didn’t keep her WWE contract alive. “My contract expired earlier this year, so it’s still kind of fresh,” she says. “All of a sudden, I just got a call, February, and they were like, your contract’s expiring in twelve days. It was shitty for sure.”
Loyalty to WWE head honcho Vince McMahon and the sport of wrestling didn’t matter: eleven years with the company was gone in under two weeks.
A scary postpartum curveball
Van Dale’s plan had been simple: have her baby, recover from giving birth, and return to TV. Then came the delivery complication no prenatal class prepares you for. “I got drop foot from having my son,” she says, recalling a condition where you can’t lift the front part of your foot due to a sudden weakness in the muscle. “After I had my son, I couldn’t really walk for a couple months.”
With a numb leg and a newborn, wrestling was off the table. “I could not go back in good conscience and try to lift someone up, and put their life in my hands, no way,” she says. For Van Dale, time to heal was a non-negotiable, even as the squared circle demanded output.
Why moms in pro‑wrestling are still the exception
In theory, WWE accommodates parenthood. In reality? “There are women who are there, who are moms and have kids, but it’s just not the norm,” she notes.
Van Dale points out that only “a few” contracts survive pregnancy, and another unnamed wrestler’s deal recently lapsed in the same manner as hers. The business model isn’t built for maternity leave, and talent pays the price.
Pivoting to purpose: Snatch and real-talk motherhood
Despite these setbacks, Van Dale refused to stay pinned to the turnbuckle. Instead, she pivoted to her new company, Snatch, which she started shortly after her son was born.
But Snatch is also an example of turning trauma into triumph. “I had several miscarriages, and nobody talked about that,” she says. “I started Snatch to normalize these conversations and educate women on our bodies.” The platform resides within an app, complete with lactation consultants, mental health professionals, and live Zoom sessions.
Her mission is personal. She polls her community on taboo topics like postpartum sex—“Postpartum sex, are we doing it? All the answers are like, hell no.”—and uses that feedback to fuel honest dialogue. The goal: to hand women the playbook they never had while juggling childcare duties, a blended family, and another pregnancy.
Van Dale’s story is a reminder that even the flashiest careers cannot escape biology. When corporate timelines, nerve damage, and motherhood intersect, something must give—and sometimes that something is a glitter-covered contract. Yet the self-described “golden retriever” energy lives on through Snatch, where she’s flipping the script on reproductive health one uncensored chat at a time.
Take a lesson from Carmella: never honor a “code of silence” when the cost of staying is too high.
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