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WWE SmackDown star Bayley was interviewed on the "Under The Ring" podcast. Bayley talked about the Royal Rumble, what she thinks of the current Damage CTRL lineup, what the legacy of her matches vs. Mercedes Mone/Sasha Banks is, and more.
Bayley on being with Damage CTRL:
"I mean, I love it. I don't just like it. I love it. I was actually thinking about this a few days ago that I was gonna make this big old sappy post about it, but I'll just share it here. I just think it's insane the group of women that I have in this group, in this faction. It started out with IYO and Dakota, obviously, and it's two women that you didn't get to see on the main shows. They've already shown that they can do it, especially IYO being the champion right now. I just thought about meeting Asuka for the first time. I met her back in Shimmer in 2010 or 2011. I saw her wrestle Sara Del Rey and I was like, Oh, my God. Who is this? I wasn't keeping up with Japanese women's wrestling at the time. To now have her by my side is incredible. She's one of my favorite opponents. She's just one of the most influential women, I think, in wrestling. Then Kairi is somebody that is untouchable and very unpredictable and so unique in her own way. To have her and be able to kind of watch her like a fly on the wall, see her do her thing, and see where she fits in with all of us has been, just, I feel so grateful."
“For the longest time, you would only see one or two girls on the show, if that. We'd be lucky to get a women's match. We'd be lucky to get more than five minutes on the show. Now the cool thing about having an all women's faction is that we don't all have to have a match. You saw IYO versus Michin, for example, the first show of the year, and we didn't all have a match, but we were all there. We all appeared. So automatically you get five women on the show whereas you would just have two women otherwise. I think that's more empowering and it's more something for the NXT girls at least to look up to and it's something that I have always dreamed about, to have an all women's faction, you know, like a big one like this. I was happy with the three of us, but to have four or more was my ultimate goal. So this has been just a dream come true."
On yelling at Michael Cole during her matches in the pandemic era:
"It was just a weird time. A lot of stuff was on the fly and we kind of just had to fill time. So that a lot of that just came from like, Okay, well it's awkwardly quiet in here. There's only one person in this arena and it's Michael Cole so he's getting it. It's just random things like that that make you really think on your feet which is fun."
Bayley’s real thoughts on Michael Cole:
"Honestly, he's the greatest at what he does. He has done this for what, 25 years? I can't even imagine, and being able to be consistent with that, he did two shows every week. I get tired doing one. I will give him all his flowers and his respect and all that stuff."
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Under the Ring with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Quotes were transcribed by Jim for WrestlingNews.co.
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