Layla Retires From WWE

Longest-tenured WWE Diva leaves company after nine years.

Layla El, who won the 2006 WWE Diva Search contest, announced her retirement from the company Wednesday, ending her employment almost exactly nine years after it began. A former WWE Women€™s and Divas Champion, Layla was the most-tenured member of the WWE women€™s locker room. Debuting shortly after winning the 2006 Diva Search Contest €“ which also gave us Maryse and Rosa Mendes €“ Layla made her first impact as part of Extreme Expose in the relaunched ECW alongside Kelly Kelly and Brooke Adams. The British beauty made her mark by joining fellow countryman William Regal, managing him to an Intercontinental Championship.
Layla would then move over to Smackdown, where she and Michelle McCool would form the WWE€™s version of Mean Girls (or TNA€™s Beautiful People), LayCool. The duo would torment women for more than a year-and-a-half, most notably Mickie James in a widely panned storyline that made fun of her weight. The team would fracture and split, with Layla winning a Loser Leaves WWE match against McCool in May 2011. Layla€™s last notable television feud involved Summer Rae as the two initially battled over, then against, Fandango. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAFrE-V9YJQ Her decision to retire should not come as a huge surprise. She hasn€™t been featured on WWE programming much during the past year. Her last televised match was in early June on Main Event, and her last major program appearance was in a Divas elimination match at Survivor Series in November. She was still wrestling house shows, as it appears that her last match was a July 25th loss to Paige in Odessa, Texas. Layla retires at a time when WWE is undergoing a self-described €œDivas Revolution,€ calling up three NXT women €“ Charlotte, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks €“ which made some of the lesser-used members of the Divas roster expendable. Perhaps Layla saw the call-ups as a sign that WWE didn€™t have anything planned for her. At the same time, nine years is a good, lengthy run for a woman in WWE. She had won both women€™s titles and was part of a pretty prominent faction, LayCool during her time with the company. Congratulations to Layla on her retirement, and best of luck to her in her life ahead.
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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.