Life after wrestling is, seemingly, just as busy as life within wrestling, at least for Daria Berenato, fka Sonya Defille.
Berenato recently appeared on Invicta FC 62 as a color analyst and, in addition to her MMA goals, she's pursuing other dreams and passions that she's had for a number of years, including podcasting and even real estate.
Berenato recently spoke with Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp to discuss her MMA plans, her wrestling past (and future) and her side gigs that may prove to be more full-time, such as podcasting. Berenato started a podcast with her wife, Toni, called 'Unwrapped with Daria & Toni' and, with each show, they cover a variety of subjects from all across the gamut.
So it was already in the works," Berenato said of the podcast. "We were going to do it while I was in WWE, we were just going to do it a little bit differently because obviously there's a lot of restrictions and certain things you can't do while you're in WWE. So we were going to just make it a fun, like Instagram show. Which I don't know if that's even a thing, but that's what we were going to do. So we had already built out the podcast studio in our house and then when they didn't renew my contract, we were like, ‘Oh, the time is definitely now.’ But it was already going to be launching like a week later. So ironically, that's how the timing worked out. But yeah, it was already in the works."
That's not all Berenato is working on. In addition to podcasting, she also works in real estate with her wife. The two flip houses and have been working in this realm for the past eight years. When asked about her real estate gig, Berenato said it's one of her life's biggest passions.
To be honest, if you want to talk about one of my true passions in life and it's not fancy or shiny, but real estate, I'm like obsessed. I started investing like maybe eight years ago and I've been doing that ever since. My wife is like a connoisseur for interior design. Like she's incredible. Our house, people see it on my Instagram and they'll DM me and be like, ‘Oh, my God, I love those picture frames,’ or ‘I love that wall molding.’ Like my wife does it all.
We demo ourselves, like we go in there and actually put boots on the ground. Yeah, we buy shitholes and we make them pretty. We have one building that was built in like the 1700s. That's like probably going to fall down on us at some point, but we went in and made it beautiful. It's apartments now and a cute little bakery in the storefront. So we have a lot of fun. I think it would be us probably finding the properties that people would be like, ‘Do not buy this place.’ At first, when I was investing, I'd be like, ‘Oh, my God, there's mold,’ and now I'm like, ‘Oh, there's only mold and termites? Oh, that's easy.’ You know? Like you get so scared off at first and then you realize that anything is fixable. So I like seeing things go from really ugly to really pretty. Like I said, my wife's at the forefront there of making that happen. So that's what it would be about, I think," Berenato said.
She continued, talking about the learning curve that goes with working in real estate.
"Well, you learn as you go. I'm like a firm believer in anything, I learned by doing. I just got to fail. Just let me go in there. Let me build walls wrong, let them fall down on my head. Let me get electrocuted. I don't know. I just need to like go in there and fail and then I'll figure it out. I can't like read a book," she said.
More than anything, Berenato said, working in real estate, especially with her wife, is simply a good time. That's why she does it.
"We have so much fun. Literally, we have so much fun. We should, obviously, document it more. My agent's always like, ‘Why don't you, when you're at the building, and the roofs falling down,’ I'll call him and tell him the stories. He's like, ‘Why aren't you documenting this?’ I'm like, ‘I don't know. I didn't have my phone out. I'm just in the moment,’ getting a slug with water from the third floor," Berenato said.
Berenato also recently had fun offering color commentary for Invicta FC 62.
For more on Berenato's return to MMA and her MMA roots, click here. To read about whether Berenato has closed the door on a return to professional wrestling, click here.
Berenato's full interview with Sean Ross Sapp can be seen in the video embedded above.
