SmackDown Star Vents On Recent WWE Releases

She has a point. Earlier this month, WWE released several wrestlers from their contracts, changing the look of the roster. Some of the wrestlers who were let go were not regular performers on WWE TV, but there were a few surprise releases. This included a handful of names who either regularly or recently appeared in matches for the company. One of the wrestlers still on the show did not take this well.

SmackDown star Carmella appeared on the most recent edition of the Bellas Podcast, discussing the fallout from the WWE releases. Carmella vented some frustrations about the WWE women’s division, including talking about how infrequently women are presented on Monday Night Raw at times. She also mentioned being rocked by the releases of Billie Kay and Peyton Royce, as she considered the two some of her closest friends. Carmella and Kay had teamed together at WrestleMania but Kay was released less than a week after their only match.

Here are some highlights of the interview, courtesy of Fightful.com:

On the current women’s division:

“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. 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.”

And on changing her personality and the releases:

“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.”

Opinion: I can see what Carmella means in a lot of ways. There are episodes of Monday Night Raw and SmackDown which do not feature women and that could be annoying to large groups of fans. At the same time, I can see why she would be annoyed at such sudden releases. Kay and Royce’s releases came out of nowhere and I’m still not sure I understand the logic. Those two were good together but they could also be good on their own, or perhaps with Carmella.

What do you think of Carmella’s comments? What do you think of the WWE women’s division at the moment? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books.

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