Peyton Royce blames herself for the IIconics’ breakup

The IIconics were released by WWE in April, just a few days after WrestleMania 37.

Peyton Royce was one of the handful of women on the roster who didn’t get a spot on the card at WrestleMania, so it wasn’t too surprising to see her name appear on WWE’s cut list. Ever since the IIconics broke up at the end of August 2020, Royce struggled to receive any meaningful television time as a singles wrestler on Raw.

On the surface, the decision to break up Peyton Royce and Billie Kay didn’t make sense and left fans scratching their heads. In an interview on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Royce described how the breakup came about.

Here is her telling of that story, and why she partially blames herself for what happened:

“I wanted to go singles. There was just things that I wanted to take off of my bucket list as a singles competitor. I vocalized that to [Billie] in like January last year. But I didn’t do anything about it. I just told her where I was at. I didn’t go and try and get us broken up or something like that.

This was in the [Performance Center] era, and [Billie] was out for a week or something. So I had this random singles match, I don’t even remember who it was against. And Vince loved it. He said to me, ‘You’re so good!’ Like, what are we doing? And so I just said to him, ‘Look, if it is possible in the future plans, I’m not saying right now, but in the future, I would like to see what I can do on my own.’ Because I’m so comfortable with [Billie], I feel like we can conquer the world together, but I wanted to see what I could do for myself.

And then so many people were like, ‘Oh it was so stupid for them to break you up!’ and, ‘Why did they break you up? You were so good together!’ And then I’m just like, I feel like that’s my fault, because I wanted to push myself and see what I was capable of. But then, I don’t know, that might have been the worst decision that I made, because nothing ever happened.”

The logic here for why she blames herself for the team’s breakup is awfully similar to how she blamed herself for Vince McMahon’s decision to fire her. In this case, it still doesn’t explain why Vince McMahon and WWE Creative forgot about her as a singles competitor once the team did break up.

Have your thoughts on the IIconics’ breakup changed at all knowing this is something Royce actually wanted to happen?