Peyton Royce (Cassie Lee) and Billie Kay (Jessica McKay) were among those released by WWE in April, and as much as that surprised fans, the company's decision to split The IIconics up was an even bigger shock in some respects.
Now, Lee has shared some insight into what happened. It turns out she blames herself; after telling McKay she wanted to eventually have a singles run, a chance encounter with Vince McMahon made that a reality. However, it wasn't really what either woman wanted at the time.
"I have never told anyone this and I hope Jess isn’t upset with me for saying this, but I wanted to go singles. There was just things I wanted to tick off of my bucket list as a singles competitor," she explained. "I vocalized that to Jess in January last year. I didn’t do anything about it, I just told her where I was at, I didn’t try and get us broken up or something like that."
"It was during the PC era and Jess was out for a week, I had this random singles match, I don’t even remember who it was against. Vince loved it, he said to me ‘you’re so good, what are we doing?’"
"I just said to him ‘look. If it is possible in future plans, I’m not saying right now, but in the future I would like to see what I can do on my own.’ I am so comfortable with Jess, we can conquer the world together. But I wanted to see what I can do for myself. I feel like it’s my fault, because I wanted to push myself and see what I was capable of. But that might have been the worst decision that I made."
Why? Well, as Lee puts it, "because nothing ever happened."
That's not her fault, of course, and WWE could have done a lot with Royce and Kay as singles stars. Ultimately, they dropped the ball and never gave them a chance and that release was definitely premature. Both women are hoping to step back into the ring soon, but have been dealing with Visa issues that have had an impact on their ability to gain paid employment in the U.S.