Bea Priestley Reflects On WWE Release, Open To AEW Return

Bea Priestley is now a free agent after her WWE non-compete expired, and she recently opened up about her exit and a possible AEW return. Priestley worked as Blair Davenport in WWE and was released in early February. She spoke with Cultaholic’s Tom Campbell for a new interview reflecting on her exit and discussing a possible return to AEW, which she exited in the summer of 2020 over an inability to travel from Japan due to COVID restrictions. You can see highlights from the conversation below (courtesy of Fightful):

On her WWE release: “As soon as I got the call, I was like, ‘Oh, I can go back to being Bea again.’ [laughs] It’s one of those things, you don’t realize how unhappy you are until you feel happy that you got the call saying that you don’t have a job anymore. That was kind of the thing, I was like, ‘Oh, okay, maybe it was good for me to be fair.’”

On WWE people reaching out after she was let go: “The actual outreach that I got from loads of people within WWE — It is what it is, I don’t take anything personally, it’s business, but I do think a lot of people felt bad for me because I just got called up, I didn’t even have a year on SmackDown or Raw or whatever. The amount of outreach I got from actual talent within the company basically saying how sorry they were and they wish me the best and they’re sure I’ll be back or be fine, it was nice to be like, ‘Oh wow, a lot of people do actually care about me.’”

On a possible AEW return: “So, I mean, definitely now with Toni —- everyone knows how close me and Toni are, we’re like sisters at this point, we see each other fairly often. But I’m also on the lines of like, I’m definitely open to conversations but I do also want a little bit of time just to do my own thing because I’ve just come out of a contract where it’s like, you have an app and if you’ve got a dot on this day, you have to be there, you have to show up. If you’re sore from the gym and you’ve had a hard match and they book you the next day, you can’t say I don’t feel like it, you have to go do it even when you don’t feel 100% or you don’t feel particularly wanting to do it, you just have to. I kind of just want to be able to take things I want to do and do it because I’m looking forward to it or I’m enjoying it rather than doing it because someone else is telling me to.”

On wanting to go her own way for a bit: “Yes. I’m all for — even in WWE, I very happy to [be there], like tell me what to do, I’m more than happy to do whatever, I’m not one of these people who is like, ‘Oh I don’t want to lose’ or ‘I’m not happy with that.’ No, if I lose to someone like Charlotte Flair in a minute, I’ll be like, oh, that’s fucking great, I just had a match with Charlotte Flair. I don’t care if it’s only a minute long, sometimes I think that’s better to be fair. But no, I’m just genuinely excited to be like, say there’s an opponent that I really want to wrestle, I can push that and get excited to wrestle someone who I’ve always wanted to and never had the chance to or have another match with someone who I really enjoyed wrestling in the past. So, yeah, I’m kind of looking forward to taking on my own stuff for a little bit and then maybe after I’ve done that, I’ll try to push a little bit harder. But I know Toni really wants to wrestle me, so we’re hoping it’s gonna happen someday.”