Mia Yim dropped a ladder match to Io Shirai on NXT this Wednesday night. The match was to determine which team would gain the advantage in the upcoming War Games match in Chicago on Saturday. The 30-year-old sat down with Lillian Garcia recently for the “Chasing Glory” podcast and spoke about being a domestic abuse survivor, being bullied during her childhood, and more.
Near the end of the interview, Garcia asked Yim about her experience as a domestic abuse survivor and how she got through the experience.
“I moved down here (Florida) in 2013 and the first couple of months was great but they always are,” Yim said on the show. “There were flags there.”
She mentioned that she moved to Florida both for her partner at the time and also to chase her dream of being in WWE.
“So, (my family) could see the flags,” she continued. “The stuff that he was saying, the stuff that he was promising, they could see the flags and they were like ‘you’re an adult, you can make your own decisions, but this is not healthy and we just want to let you know that this is not right.'”
Yim would then say she continued in the relationship feeling like it would be alright.
“It always starts out small and gets bigger and bigger,” Yim continued. “It was the arguments that turned into just being called different names. The competition between our careers, I was doing more traveling, I had the WWE tryout. I was just about to get into TNA. In my opinion, he probably felt like he was in competition. He would bring me down mentally at first verbally.”
At this point, Garcia confirmed with Yim that the partner being spoken about is also a wrestler.
“The first time, I was drinking a protein shake,” Yim recalled. “He slapped the protein shake out of my hand and then put me in a headlock, like a real headlock. And after that happened, I’m looking around and I’ve never been in that kind of position before so I didn’t know what happened but the first thing that I did was clean up the protein shake. I immediately just started cleaning and as I’m cleaning it’s like ‘what just happened?'”
“I know this is wrong but he loves me and apologizes happened,” Yim spoke regarding what she was thinking at the time.
“Then it just came more consistent and more extreme,” Yim continued. “There was a point when I got locked in a closet. There was a point where I’d hurt my knee at a show, so it was kind of tender, and he – I got pushed against a wall and he kneed the inside of my knee.”
Yim would continue to say she was in the situation for approximately 2 years. The conversation would get so honest that Yim even admitted that she and Shelton Benjamin don’t really hate each other as is often presented on social media as being the case. Benjamin played a role in helping Yim escape the situation she was living in.
“He is my big brother, I love him so much,” Yim said on the show. “He pretty much offered up his home for me. The minute he found out, immediately he said ‘I’ll get you a plane ticket, you get out of there, I got you’ and at this point, I wasn’t ready yet.”
After more episodes of abuse, Mia said she found the courage to escape.
“You’re not going to be the reason why the police is going to call my parents telling them that their daughter has passed away,” Yim said through tears. “So, I finally left.”
Garcia then mentioned that there are numerous people listening to her story who are going through the same thing. She asked Mia what advice she has for them.
“I’ve tried my best to be an advocate and to say that silence is the abuser’s weapon,” Yim said.
The full conversation can be viewed in the player below:
