Lacey Lane (Kayden Carter) Reveals She & Kacy Catanzaro Sent Emails To Road Dogg About More Opportunities, He Told Them ‘Timing Is Everything’

Lacey Lane looks back on her time with WWE.

The seven-year run that Lacey Lane, f.k.a. Kayden Carter, had in WWE came to an end in May 2025 when she and her partner, Kacy Catanzaro, f.k.a. Katana Chance, were released from the company.

Lane spoke candidly about her time with WWE during her appearance on Busted Open. She spoke about what she is looking to do post-WWE and what that road looks like for her. She stated that she’ll never take anything away from what she’s done as a tag team wrestler, but wants to remind people that there was something to her before that.

She is looking to land wherever the opportunity presents itself and listed Japan, AEW, ROH, and NWA.

“It just feels like a relief to me because I feel like I have so much to offer and I feel like I wasn’t able to showcase that. People are used to seeing me in a tag team, and I love that. I will never, ever take anything away from me being in a tag team, but I also want to remind people that I am an individual, that I did have a spark before I got to WWE. I was so much of a spitfire. That same passion and that same drive is still there and I wanna show the world that I’m very capable on my own, and not just being, like, of this amazing tag team but, as an individual, I can shine on my own as well. So an ideal world, wherever the opportunity is, whether it’s Japan, AEW, Ring of Honor, NWA, I want to be able to show everyone that I’m very capable and that I can provide something that people really haven’t seen before and bring back my lucha strong style and stuff that really got away from me in WWE so, I mean, anywhere honestly.”

Busted Open co-host Bully Ray, who trained Lacey, gave his opinion that he felt she lost some of her spark in WWE, and Lane agreed. She feels she was held back in terms of what she could do.

Lane said she became selfless as a tag wrestler. She added that Kacy Catanzaro has become one of her best friends and they’ve been through a lot together, such as Catanzaro wanting to step away from wrestling at one point. Lane remembers Catanzaro breaking her nose in the summer of 2024, so she started pitching to show her singles skills.

“I feel like it just — it got away from me, and I’ve been feeling that. It’s so crazy. I feel like we’re just so connected and if everyone doesn’t know, I’ve learned from this man (Bully Ray) right here. A lot of the information and a lot of the things I’ve taken away and the drive and the push is because of this guy right here, you know? Him and D-Von (Dudley) and (Jonathan) Cruz, you know, Serpentico, have really pushed and have formed that for me to be that kind of person, because of all the things that they prepared me for. So when I got to WWE, I feel like I was just very held back in what I was able to do. I’ve pitched ideas, I put myself out there, I tried new things and it just felt like, if that wasn’t the direction they wanted, I kind of had to go with whatever they had prepared for us, and then also join a tag team. I felt like I became so selfless, because at some point, I felt like, okay, let me do my teachers some justice. I’m like, okay, I’m gonna tag team, they’re one of the greatest tag teams ever, and I was like, how can I put myself up there on that pedestal? So, tag team wrestling became such a focus. Kacy (Catanzaro) became one of my best friends that was there, my rock and everything and we shared so much up and downs together that I think all the tough things that we went through there, and her wanting to leave at some point, us not knowing (where) our future was headed and stuff like that and us having that bond together put us stronger as a tag team and I kind of just left that individual in the back, and she never showed up… I always felt that. Because you know me, I’m just like that fire. I have that fire, have that passion and I still have it now, and that’s why I’m so eager just to be out there, just to really show people, like, damn, she was there the whole time. If she was just given a chance on something. One PLE, one individual thing. When she broke her nose, I was pitching, I keep pitching, like, ‘Hey, can I do something? Just to show you? Anything?’ But, it was never in my favor so, I just feel like that’s where it’s at.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Lacey revealed that she wrote an email to Brian ‘Road Dogg’ James before her and Catanzaro’s release. She expressed that they wanted an opportunity.

James was named the co-lead writer of SmackDown in early 2025. He told them that timing is everything. Lacey feels that if you’re not the chosen one at WWE, there’s nothing you can do to improve your standing.

“That is a hard one to say,” Lane responded when asked how WWE talents go from being used on TV to being let go. “And I’ll say this and I’ll stand by this, if you’re not the hand-chosen, it doesn’t matter what you do. I felt like right before we got released, I kid you not, I wrote an email to Road Dogg and I was like, ‘Listen, we’ve never been on a PLE. We just need an opportunity, we need a chance to show you what we’re capable of. We want this so bad. We just need one opportunity,’ and he was like, ‘Timing is everything,’ and then we wrote out this whole thing about, ‘Hey, this could be the scenario. You could give us the opportunity at a WrestleMania, still with your story.’ We included all the women. We were like, ‘This could be the story.’ We put it out there… At that point, I have no idea what to do because every time after a match, we got great critiques. T.J. (Wilson) was always like, ‘That was awesome. You guys brought unique stuff.’ All the time, we were being praised for what we did in the short period of time as a tag team, given two minutes, three minutes to put on this performance of a lifetime and I feel like we never dropped the ball so for me, I have no idea, because, even if you didn’t have time, I felt like we were doing stuff to get ourselves over, and I don’t know if that matters to them and I’m not quite sure, and it’s nothing on them but, again, I feel like if you’re not that hand-chosen, if you’re not that hand-picked, if you’re not the one that they didn’t envision to do something for, it’s so hard to get over unless there’s some kind of miraculous thing that happens that just puts you over automatically and you just blow up, and you know, instead of given the time and the path to get there.”

Lane had only been wrestling for two years before she was signed by WWE. Her tag partner, Kacy Catanzaro, has returned to the American Ninja Warrior show.

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Busted Open with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.