Bayley and Charlotte Flair were this week’s guests on Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia, and the current SmackDown Women’s Champion opened up about how she felt staying in NXT while the other ‘Four Horsewomen’ got called up to the main roster.
Bayley says she’d heard some rumblings about the others getting called up, and started to have doubts and thought maybe she’d done something wrong. She noted that she was still able to work with a cast on her broken hand, so that wasn’t it, but she didn’t want the others to feel bad for her on their debut night. Bayley added that they all shared a connection, but that year by herself allowed her to really grow and find her own place in wrestling.
“I sat on my couch and I watched it happen, and I you know you kind of have like mixed feelings like ‘dang, I wish I could be there’ but more than anything, I was just so happy to see them being there and I knew once that once they were there that everything was going to change. And I knew that they were going to make my path a lot easier. I’m like ‘ok, you guys get the work started, and then when I get there it’ll be a little bit easier for me. At least I’ll have friends when I get there.’
But now definitely looking back I think that year in NXT by myself without them—I had nobody to run to, I had no one to rely on, I had a brand new roster and I became the NXT Women’s Champion. That was the biggest year of my career, I learned so much about myself. I learned so much more in the ring. I was able to take more of a leadership role and travel the world. That’s when NXT started going to the UK and started going everywhere for the first time and I was doing it as the women’s champion. So that was just amazing I had so many of the girls’ first matches there, where like I taught Lacey Evans how to do a headlock takeover and now look at her—things like that. Or I was a part of everybody’s first little thing so I definitely missed them and it was it was so hard, but I don’t think I would have been the person that I am or the performer that I am now if I didn’t have that year by myself because I had nobody to rely on except myself.
And then when I got there, Sasha was like, ‘here, let me show you everything’ and it’s like they took care of me and I was very grateful.”
Charlotte added to Bayley’s thoughts and said if Bayley got called up, her big TakeOver moments wouldn’t have happened and everything happened for a reason. She related the situation to Becky Lynch previously feeling like she was missing out on WrestleMania when Asuka faced Charlotte, but Becky later got to main event WrestleMania 35, saying there are big moments in store for them and Bayley became the heart of NXT by getting held back.
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
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