In an interview with Ariel Helwani for BT Sport, WWE RAW superstar Bayley discussed several topics, including original plans for the Damage CTRL faction, the potential of Mercedes Moné (fka Sasha Banks) returning to the WWE, attending the NJPW Wrestle Kingdom event where Moné made her first post-WWE appearance, and much more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
On the original plans for Damage CTRL: “That is something that I thought about for a couple of years before it actually happened, it had a different group of people as time went on, Peyton Royce was someone that I really wanted in there, and Tegan Nox was someone that I wanted in there, there was a lot of people that it kind of change throughout time as people left the company and things like that, but Dakota was always, she’s one of the OG’s who I always envisioned in this group. I just thought, there’s no women’s factions, there’s been trios and to me, if it were up to me right now, there would be more of us, but we’ll see, there’s been trios, but there’s never been like a big faction where there is four or five of us and that’s what I wanted. I talked to Hunter about this a couple of WrestleMania’s ago, and he told me, well you need to know why are you guys together, oh yeah, you guys are cool together, but find the reason why, me and DX for this, me and Evolution were this, and explain those things. Then, I was like, maybe I need to think about it more, so when I was injured, I thought about it more and shot stuff at the Performance Center while I was there with a group of girls that I really wanted. My first original one, I wanted to be called The Now, because to me, I didn’t care about the Championships I had won in the past, I don’t care about what happens next, these girls right here and what we are about to do, the present is all that matters.”
On Mercedes Moné potentially returning to the WWE: “I’ll never give up hope that she’ll come back. I’ll say yes, because this is her home, this is her dream. I love to see what she’s doing and what she’s going to be doing over the next few months, she’s going to literally take over the world, take the world by storm, but I know that this is her home and is where her heart is, and by her heart, I mean me, she needs to come back to me, I need her, I need my travel partner.”
On attending the recent NJPW Wrestle Kingdom event where Moné made her first post-WWE appearance: “I went there on my own, there was a few of us that flew out there, just because she’s been there for all of my big moments. Even as she hasn’t been part of the company and I’ve made my return and I’ve had my big matches, she’s there for me, so of course I want to be there for her, we’ve done so much together in the WWE, she means so much to me and so much to the wrestling world, like I have to be there for this moment. I literally flew out right after RAW, got to Japan two hours before the show started and raced over there and made it, met everybody there and sat in the crowd, kind of incognito. It was so magical to be there for her, and I just knew how important it was to her, she just loves this, everybody knows how much she loves this and how much wrestling means to her and how much WWE means to her and she wouldn’t be there without the WWE, so I think it meant a lot to her that I was able to go.”
The full interview is available at this link.
