Kiana James Opens Up About Being Sidelined For A Year Due To Knee Injury, Talks Qualifying For WWE Elimination Chamber Match

Kiana James’ first media interview as a WWE talent.

A new episode of TMZ’s Inside The Ring podcast was pushed out, featuring WWE talent Kiana James. James is coming off of qualifying for the women’s Elimination Chamber match.

James is now in the mix of WWE programming, but early in her main roster run, she went down with a knee injury. She suffered the injury in 2024 and did not return until the summer of 2025.

“Yeah, I mean, I won’t lie, emotionally, it took a toll at first just because it’s like you work so hard to get to that point and then you feel like it’s ripped away from you. But then again, that mental toughness comes in and it’s like, okay, this happened. I can’t change it, so I can either let it define me or I can use it and I decided am I gonna be someone where this defines my career or is this just gonna be something that happened and I made a promise to myself that I would come back better and stronger and I took the time. The time when I wasn’t able to be in the ring or training in the gym, I took the time to start studying more and watching more film, because coming into WWE, everything happened really fast for me… The knee injury really allowed me to take step back and watch film and I wasn’t a lifelong fan so really, there’s decades of wrestling that I can go back and watch and study and see what resonates with me and my skillset, my strengths, my weaknesses, and I do think that I came back stronger and I think that it was definitely the mental toughness and the promise to myself to come back stronger that kind of led me to where I’m at now.”

James was in an Elimination Chamber qualifying match with Charlotte Flair and Nia Jax. She scooped up Flair’s shoulders while Flair had Jax in the Figure-Eight Leg Lock.

James spoke about qualifying for the women’s Elimination Chamber and touched on the real-life friendship she’s formed with Charlotte.

“I think there’s a bittersweet to that, right? Because we’ve become partners in the gym and training through knee rehab, and things like that. But also, taking a step back and realizing, this is the most decorated woman in WWE of all-time. Being able to be like, you just did that. You just pinned the best of the best. So it was a great moment for me and it’s something that I’ll definitely remember for a long time.”

The women’s Elimination Chamber is set, as Kiana James will be competing against Tiffany Stratton, Rhea Ripley, Alexa Bliss, Asuka, and Raquel Rodriguez.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit TMZ’s Inside The Ring podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.