During a recent episode of After The Bell, Corey Graves took issue with Peyton Royce’s position after The Iconics split up as a tag team. Here’s what he had to say:
Peyton Royce doesn’t do this for a pay check. Peyton Royce loves this. She loves wrestling, this is an art form for her. When she was not on television and I was in the Performance Center, she was in there working joining classes and helping others because she just loves this business. That’s what I heard from her.
She moved across the world, she left everything moving from Australia to America. When I first got here, she was like the locker room leader in NXT, she kind of helped me say hey, this is the path. I’ve always thanked her for that, so to hear her speak her truths, it resonated with me because that was the person talking, not a character. I look at the person who’s worked very hard day in and day out, who’s been overlooked in her own mind and I believe she has, has literally picked up her life for this business. It spoke to me about the person, it wasn’t the character, it was the person.
When they [IIconics] split, I don’t think I’m speaking out of line by saying everyone and their mother saw Peyton as the breakout star. Everybody kind of said, okay, Billie is the sidekick. As far as gauging television time as success, Billie took the ball and ran with it. Billie has been on SmackDown practically every Friday, she’s incredibly entertaining, and makes me laugh. Billie has been doing her thing where Peyton has been floundering.
That’s not for a lack of talent, ability and definitely not a lack of passion. To me, as a fan to try to look at this as a fan objectively, I don’t know who Peyton Royce is anymore. I know who Billie Kay is, Peyton is a good looking girl who is good at wrestling to me. I just don’t know beyond what I just described who she is, why do I want to see her face Asuka?
Credit: After The Bell. H/T WrestlingInc.