Bayley Remembers Dusty Rhodes – “I Hope He’d Be So, So, Proud”

Appearing on the Oral Sessions podcast with Renee Paquette, Bayley has opened up about how the legendary Dusty Rhodes impacted her career.

The former SmackDown Women’s Champion who has previously discussed how she was terrified to cut promos in front of the hall of famer, has now lifted the lid on the role he played in her signature look in NXT. Although she added that he may not be too happy with her, now that her ponytail is a thing of the past.

“First I think that he would be so upset because he’s the one who told me… I took my ponytail out, I was wrestling Fox, and it was my first time debuting the character, and I took my ponytail out when I got in the ring, because there’s no way they’ll let me wear this. And Dusty yelled at me when I came back, like ‘Don’t ever take the ponytail down,’ and I was like, ‘ok.’ So I never did it again and that made me. So he would be a little disappointed or sad maybe, because he went through everything with me. Tried to help me with my promos for years, you know, and then to the point now where I have my own talk show, and I’m a completely different character, and look completely different. I think he’d be so, so, I hope he would be so, so proud. And I think he’d be really entertained by it.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Bayley also lifted the lid on her early time with WWE, where she was told to “wrestle like a girl.”

“I know Sasha [Banks] has talked about this in past interviews but they would tell us ‘wrestle like a girl’ and I didn’t understand that. Why did you hire me for my wrestling if you’re not gonna let me wrestle? It was hard to balance that and I put over AJ Lee so much but she was the one who said ‘stick to you, be you and obviously you’re gonna work for them so you’re gonna have to do a little of what they want but as long as you stay true to who you are you just have to be patient’. That was maybe six months in and I was just struggling up until then. Until she basically said, it’s ok to be myself.”

During her illustrious career in WWE Bayley has won every women’s championship that here is to win, becoming the first WWE Women’s Grand Slam winner in the company’s history.

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