During a recent appearance on CJ Perry’s (aka Lana’s) podcast, former WWE star Sonya Deville revealed that a real fight broke out between Liv Morgan and Mandy Rose during a promo class at the WWE Performance Center early in their careers.
Deville shared the full story:
“Can we talk about when Gionna [Liv] and Mandy got in a real fight in promo class? Beating the living sh*t out of each other. I don’t know if I’ve ever told this story. It’s not really mine to tell, but I’m going to tell it now.”
According to Deville, the altercation occurred during a “pull-apart promo” exercise — a training drill where wrestlers simulate being restrained from fighting before cutting a promo to heighten emotion and intensity.
“We’re in promo class, okay? We’re all new. Gionna got to the Performance Center a year before me and Mandy. Then me and Mandy came, and we’re all still new though, and we’re in promo class and we did this drill called the pull-apart promo. So, you do a pretend pull-apart — people are security, or other people are pulling you off the other girl — and you’re just pretending.”
“So, we’re doing it, I’m in the middle of the two of them… and then I’m feeling wind whiz past my ear, and I’m like, ‘Yo, they’re really throwing.’ Then I hear one of them say, ‘What, bitch?’ And then you know how you can feel the intensity in someone’s body when they’re no longer working? You know what that feels like — when they grab and you just know, ‘Oh, it’s a fight now.’ Because now it is a scramble. It’s the Tasmanian Devil.”
Deville recalled having to physically step in to separate the two women. “I’m in the middle going, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!’ and I’m shooting on both of them to get them off each other. But Mandy had Gionna’s hair, and Gionna had Mandy’s hair. They’re screaming at each other, swinging for the fences. Finally, I’m ripping them apart. The boys slide in to help me rip them apart because they’re like untamed animals. We get them apart. They slide out, coaches are yelling, Bloom comes in, and everyone’s freaking out.”
The fight reportedly ended with one of the most memorable exchanges of the day. “Mandy was so proud at the time — you might remember this — that she didn’t have hair extensions back then. So she [Liv] rolls out and she’s like, ‘You pulled my hair! You pulled my hair!’ And Mandy goes, ‘At least my hair is real, bitch.’”
Deville said the two continued shouting and swearing at each other as trainers rushed in to calm things down. “They’re just f*cking each other up now, cursing each other out. And you know Mandy — she was so proud of that. And we’re all just like, ‘What is going on?’ I was friendly with Gionna. I was best friends with Mandy, but I was already friendly with Gionna, so I was kind of like the middleman.”
Deville concluded by noting that the scuffle likely started when one threw a punch that connected a little too hard: “I think one swung a little too snug and the other retaliated.”
