Carmella and The Bella Twins are opening up about their frustrations with the current booking of WWE's women and the recent release of both Billie Kay and Peyton Royce.
Carmella first arrived on WWE's main roster in the summer of 2016 following the second brand split. Her first feud was with Nikki Bella, who had recently returned from neck surgery at that year's SummerSlam event. This rivalry was a portion of the bigger development of the SmackDown women's division and the overall budding Women's Evolution in WWE.
That Evolution would go on to spawn many historic moments including the first-ever women's Royal Rumble match, the first-ever women's Hell in a Cell match, and the first-ever women's main event of WrestleMania.
Carmella was recently a guest on The Bella Twins podcast, where all three women expressed frustration over the current booking of WWE's women's division, suggesting that it is becoming reminiscent of what used to be prior to the Women's Evolution of 2016.
“Even, myself, I would sit at home and watch Raw and it would be 10 p.m. before I would see a woman on the show," said Carmella. "It's like, ‘this is a three-hour show. What the hell?’ Even if I'm just a fan, which I am. Like if I didn't work at WWE and I was just sitting at home watching, I want to see the women. That's why I tune in. If I'm waiting until 10 p.m. to see a girl, it's like, ‘what the hell?’ That's not okay for little girls at home or whoever is watching waiting for the women. It just feels like oh, now, there's only a focus on maybe two women or one women's storyline. Like you were saying back when you were there, we had 3 women's storylines on a 2-hour show and that was when I was still with James [Ellsworth], so we know it's a possibility. We know that they're capable of doing that. I think sometimes there's this weird shift and people kind of forget. We need to remind them, no. We are a big part of the show. We don't have to have matches every week, we can do promo segments or backstage segments, even a 30-second insert into the show, just to show hey, here she is. She's represented on the show. Then, if people are talking about it, maybe next week we give her a little bit of a longer segment because people want to see that. Whether it's me, or whoever it may be.”
The conversation then turned to the recent releases of Billie Kay and Peyton Royce. Billie Kay was paired with Carmella at WrestleMania and Carmela noted that she was looking forward to adding a new wrinkle to her character with this pairing and that these releases, in particular, shocked her because she was very close with the Australian duo.
“I don't know what the right or wrong things to say is. All I can speak from is my experience and we were super excited for this story and I felt like, okay, I'm done with this whole sexy gimmick that they want me to do, which is fine. It's fun to be sexy, but I feel like I wanted to show my personality more. I wanted to show a little bit more of a fun side and I was looking forward to doing that with Billie. Like you said, our entrance alone, she was cracking me up. So I was really looking forward to seeing where that was going to go and unfortunately, we can't do that anymore. Even Peyton, those two were some of my closest friends since they got here. So it was the first time I was really rocked by a release.”
Prior to Billie Kay's release, Carmella had openly stated that she was hoping to have a New Day-style faction with Billie Kay and Bayley. You can learn more about that at this link.
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