Bea Priestley is happily wrestling in Stardom.
However, the former WWE star isn’t shy about voicing her frustration over how her WWE run went. For most of it, it never seemed that WWE understood what to do with the 29-year-old.
It appears that there were some plans for Priestley before her release, but what partly ruined her push was a change in writers on the blue brand. Priestley explained what happened in the weeks leading up to her shocking release from the WWE on That Sweet Pop with Dion McCracken & Brad Lewis (Transcript courtesy of Fightful)
“That was essentially what happened. This isn’t going to sound how I mean it to sound because I’m very happy for all of my friends. It’s just a reflection and my experience. Kiana (James) and Lyra (Valkyria) go to Raw, and I go to SmackDown. Smackdown, you’re lucky if you get two girls’ matches on one SmackDown anyway, because SmackDown was only two hours at the time, and Raw is three. Lyra, straight away, is doing the Queen of the Ring tournament stuff, and that was awesome for her.
They did have some idea with me, but two weeks after I got moved to SmackDown, the head writer changed to a different head writer, so all of my initial conversations weren’t known. The general writer that I had, she had only just been promoted to a writer, so I think she was a little worried to push for me because she was new in that role. I think she was going with the flow rather than being like, ‘Why don’t we do something with Bea.’ No disrespect to anyone, because I was the same way on SmackDown.
I wasn’t going to step on anyone’s toes. I was going to do as I was told because I’m new here. There were times when I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.”
But there were teases that Priestley would join Chelsea Green’s Secret Hervice staple. Unfortunately, that never came to fruition as Priestley was fired and Alba Fyre was given a big role in the faction.
“There were talks about tagging with Isla and Alba and us being a trio in the Unholy Union because we were doing six-woman tags against Bianca, Jade, and Naomi. That was a conversation. ‘We might put you with these guys, but we’re not sure.’ It got to the end of the year and I had a triple threat with Bianca and Chelsea, that was my last match.
“I did a backstage with Piper in January and that was alluding to me doing stuff with Chelsea and Piper in the Secret Hervice. I was basically told I would be on the Europe tour in March. I had all my flights, [Talent Relations] came to me and was like, ‘You’re going to be super busy doing stuff with Chelsea and Piper. Get ready for it.’ I had one of the writers come to me, talking to us about what they wanted me and Piper to be wearing, how they wanted us to behave, all the gimmicks.
It was happening. ‘In two weeks, we’re doing Chelsea and Michin, you’re coming in to cost Michin and joining Chelsea.’ It was exactly how they did it with Alba. I was like, ‘Cool.’ Six days later, I’m out of a job.”
The bright side of this situation is Priestley is no longer held back from being herself and reminding audiences why many considered her as one of the top female wrestlers in the world prior to her signing with WWE.