BREAKING: Former WWE Champion Layla El Drops Huge Announcement – “Exactly 20 Years Later”

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Today, the 49-year-old took to X/Twitter to make a massive announcement. She shared a clip of her entry in the 2006 competition, which was aired on this day exactly two decades ago. She also announced that she was starting a new podcast that will go live on August 16 this month, exactly 20 years from her winning the Diva Search competition.

“20 years ago today, this aired on WWE TV. I wanted it more than I could ever put into words. Eleven days later, on August 16, 2006, I won the WWE Diva Search in New York City. Now, exactly 20 years later, I’m starting a new chapter. @LayTalkPodcast with Layla El premieres August 16, 2026. Funny how life comes full circle 💋,” Layla wrote.

Layla claimed she could have retired from WWE earlier

The WWE veteran appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet a few months ago and made a massive revelation.

Layla started in WWE when she was nearly 30, and retired nine years later, aged 38. Interestingly, during her tenure with the Stamford-based promotion, she had received an offer of USD 250,000 from Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine to do a bold shoot.

She came from a family of Moroccan immigrants who had settled in the UK. She thought she was already pushing the boundaries of her Muslim Arab family with her work in WWE and felt posing for Playboy would have been too much at the time, and refused the offer.

“I think they’d offered me like $250,000 to do it. I was like, no, I’m not doing it. […]Honestly, I was really scared, because a lot of people don’t know this, I’m Arab. So my actual family, I’m an immigrant in England, but I’m of Moroccan heritage,” she said

In hindsight, though, she felt she could have retired that very year had she taken up the assignment. But she didn’t, and now she is all set to start her podcast journey 20 years down the line.

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