Bea Priestley, who wrestled in WWE as Blair Davenport, was released earlier this year by the company. She has now surpassed her 90-day non-compete clause which means she can show up anywhere at this point.
While speaking with Cultaholic, Priestley discusses her WWE release and what may be next for her.
“As soon as I got the call, I was like, ‘Oh, I can go back to being Bea again.’ 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.’”
She continued, “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.’”
As far as what is next for Priestley, she would be open to a return to AEW. However, she would like to do her own thing first.
“Definitely now with Toni [Storm], everyone knows how close me and Toni are. We’re like sisters at this point. She lives in Orlando as well, we see each other fairly often. But I’m also along the lines of I’m definitely open to having 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. 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 or you’ve had a hard match and they book you the next day, you can’t say you don’t feel like it. You have to go do it even when you don’t feel 100 per cent or you don’t particularly feel wanting to do it. You just have to,” Priestley stated.
“So I kind of just want to be able to take things that I want to do and do it because I’m looking forward to it or enjoying it rather than doing it because someone else is telling me to…Even WWE, I was very happy like, ‘Tell me what to do. I’m more than happy to do whatever.’ I’m not one of those people who is like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to lose.'”
Priestley previously worked for AEW for a year in 2019.
