These “Day Of” videos WWE releases are usually good if only because they’re incredibly well produced. They’re mostly shallow, and lacking depth, but every now and again you get something like you see above. Cameras followed Bayley to go behind-the-scenes with her at Stomping Grounds and she opens up about how she felt being moved from Monday Night Raw to SmackDown Live (which meant being moved away from her tag team partner, Sasha Banks).
Put simply, it wasn’t easy:
“I love this business so much, too much, it drives me crazy. When I moved to SmackDown, I felt very alone. Like, I left my friends on Raw and I’d never been on SmackDown before so I felt a little insecure. And then I had to snap out of it. It was like ‘well, what do you think you’re gonna do here? If you sit here and you feel sad or you feel scared you’re just gonna get walked all over.’ So I instantly had to change my mindset. I instantly had to change the gears in my head, and just had to freaking go. I had to not stop, I had to not look back. Don’t think about Raw, do not think about the people you’re leaving behind, and don’t think about anything else. Just think about yourself for a change and go. That’s what I’ve been riding off and Money in the Bank kind of really sealed the deal. Like, ‘okay, you can trust yourself. Believe in yourself, because good things happen.’”
To fans, the Superstar Shakeup is just an entertainment spectacle but there are real people with real feelings involved whose lives are being turned upside down. WWE would do well to show us that human side more often.
As for Bayley, it didn’t take long to hit the ground running, considering she’s already SmackDown women’s champion.