Former NXT Talent Anya Zova Compares WWE Training To Being In The Military

WWE's developmental system is widely lauded nowadays for the incredible talents that have come up through it. Since the system's facelift in the early 2010s, which saw it transition to primarily revolving around "WWE NXT," many stars have come out of the system. However, around those early days, there were certainly growing pains. 

Anya Zova, who was signed to WWE developmental between 2012 and 2013, recently spoke on the "Developmentally Speaking" podcast about the "military" feeling of WWE developmental.

"Looking back, I was just like, 'Wow that was so intense,' and I have so much respect for all the wrestlers. I've never been in the military, but this is how I think the military looks," stated Zova. "You don't have your life outside of that, it's basically at the gym from Monday eight in the morning you're ready to train. Monday is also weigh-in, make sure you're in a weight category, like wherever you know you have to stay skinny and lean. That actually drove a lot of people nuts and some girls had eating disorders because of that."

She also spoke about what's changed in WWE now, especially with the company hiring bigger female stars.

"Now it changed because they hired some bigger girls, but when I was there, there was ... I had so much pressure. I remember [Charlotte] Flair, she would like wake me at up six in the morning on Monday — we lived nearby — she would [be] like, 'Okay we need to stay in shape, let's do cardio together before the weigh-in so we lose an additional few pounds before they weigh us in.' So that's what we used to do," said the former WWE star.

Zova's wide-ranging interview went on to talk about the monotonous nature of her weeks while in developmental. She recalled how a whole week would just be spent training with nothing in between. She stated in the interview how this, among other factors, led to some toxicity in the WWE developmental program.