Kaitlyn recalls WWE telling her to lose 10 pounds during Divas Era

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When Kaitlyn signed with WWE in 2010, she was in phenomenal shape due to her background in bodybuilding. Yet, according to her, WWE officials weren’t completely happy with her physique and asked her to lose 10 pounds. The former WWE Divas Champion shared this story during a recent appearance on TMZ’s Inside the Ring podcast. During the interview, Kaitlyn — who used her real name, Celeste Bonin, during the talk — touched on a variety of subjects with TMZ hosts Branson Quirke and Roger Corral. She spoke about her time in WWE, her mental health challenges, and her new wellness and mobility platform, Flex With Celeste, which she’s launching this year. Talk of her physical appearance came when Corral asked if she had ever felt pressure to look a certain way during her initial run in WWE that ended in 2014. “Yeah. Well, any woman that was in the Divas Era during that time will probably tell you the same thing. As soon as I got hired, they told me to lose 10 pounds. So, it was like immediate,” Kaitlyn answered. She continued: “When I tried out, I was coming from competing on a bodybuilding stage. I was in pretty good shape. I wasn’t like stage lean or anything, but I was in pretty good shape. It’s just because I had more muscle.” Ultimately, Kaitlyn said she felt like her appearance made her stand out and led to her calling herself “The Hybrid Diva” due to her not being as muscular as someone like Beth Phoenix, while also not being as lean as other women on the roster. “I started that on Twitter, and I was starting to tell the commentators to get that on air because it’s truly how I felt,” she said. “I wasn’t this supermodel-ly type in the way that my body looked, and also how I acted, and in real life, like who I was. “I was athletic and kind of just like a tomboy, and so that didn’t resonate,” she said. “I wasn’t Beth Phoenix. I was like in-between… I didn’t know how to categorize myself, and I don’t think that the creative team knew how to categorize me. So, I’m like, let me just try to create something different, something new. I’m a hybrid of these two kind of avatars that made up the women’s division at the time.” Bonin, who last competed for WWE during NXT’s Mae Young Classic tournament in 2018, was also asked by Corral if she ever gets the “itch” to return to wrestling. After noting that she’s in the “best shape” of her life, Kaitlyn said that while getting back in a WWE ring is not currently her top goal, she’s open to the possibility. What do you think about the pressure women face in the wrestling industry? Any thoughts on a potential return to the ring for Kaitlyn? Let us know in the comments.