It’s hard to believe that 3 years ago this very month, Saraya ‘Paige’ Bevis would make her shocking debut on Monday Night Raw and defeat AJ Lee to become the Divas Champion. What a moment that was.
From then on over the next 2 years, the former NXT Women’s Champion went from strength to strength, involved in high profile feuds with Nikki Bella and continuing her rivalry with AJ to become one of the faces of the new ‘Women’s Revolution in WWE which saw fellow former NXT Women’s Champions Sasha Banks & Charlotte Flair also join the main roster.
The Team B.A.D (Naomi, Banks, Tamina) vs Team Bella (Nikki Bella, Brie Bella & Alicia Fox) vs Team P.C.B (Paige, Charlotte, Becky) feud wasn’t all well received by critics (voted Wrestling Observer’s ‘word feud of 2015’) but it really was a revolution in itself, with more women getting chances and more opportunities.
However despite this, Paige’s opportunities became limited. She was forced to watch on as the careers of Sasha Banks and Charlotte Flair hit the big time, whilst hers stalled.
Even a heel turn left viewers confused as inconsistent booking of her character saw her give a post match beating of Natalya, yet just a couple of weeks later team up with her as if it had never happened.
It was obvious that the WWE writers had other priorities.
Paige didn’t really do much of note between the end of 2015 (due to injury) and most of 2016, until during the newly announced WWE Draft she was drafted to the Raw brand. She wouldn’t appear again.
In August her family members stated Paige was off television due to an injury, but she would suffer another blow as both her and her newly found love interest Alberto El Patron (formerly Del Rio) were served a 30 day suspension by WWE for failing the wellness policy. This mirrored with her having to undergo neck surgery highlighted a bitter few months for the former Divas Champion, which would be capped off in October by WWE’s announcement that Paige had violated the wellness policy again, leading to a 60 day suspension, one that she would heavily dispute on social media.
Despite a horror end to 2016, the worst was yet to come.
In March/April 2017 as you are probably all aware, private and sexual images of Paige were leaked and shared online which also involved her (then boyfriend) Brad Maddox as well as current WWE Superstar Xavier Woods.
Despite the videos and photos being a few years old, her career and reputation were left in tatters, and Paige herself was left humiliated.
Nobody can be sure of who leaked the personal property or why they did it, but the real issue was that Norwich born Paige’s downfall in WWE had taken another huge blow (no pun intended).
It all came at highly unfortunate timing as earlier in the year it was announced that Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Stephen Merchant (The Office, Extras) were teaming up to make Paige’s life story into a movie.
This had been great news and a silver lining of sorts for her after such a toxic last 6 months with the company.
As far as I’m aware, the movie will still go ahead as planned, but producers can’t have been happy over receiving such bad publicity before the movie had even reached completion.
The incident will have no doubt taken several steps back in her return to WWE, and again, left her current reputation in tatters.
The other big problem people seem to have is her fiance/husband, Alberto El Patron. Many feel that El Patron is out to sabotage her career in WWE, and unintentionally he seems to be succeeding, releasing videos of him, intoxicated, on a rant against the company Paige already must be on very thin ice with.
It seems unlikely that WWE are eager to bring Paige back to television, and whilst she recovers from her neck surgery, her antics with El Patron will be doing her no favours.
My question is does Paige even want to get back into the ring herself? Drunken video ramblings aside, she seems to be enjoying her life outside of the wrestling business, opening up a restaurant with her husband, El Patron, and making appearances here and there supporting him.
The best thing Paige can do now in my opinion, is take 2, maybe 3 years out of WWE completely, and focus on rebuilding her confidence, in ring ability and her reputation. She is highly talented, she won’t be short of offers in many different fields. An idea is that once she regains full health she could tour the indies again as one of the major stars, as well as working shows with her beloved, Alberto.
Then again she could just set her mind to focus, push her determination levels and we may even see her back in WWE within months!
One thing she is never short of, is supporters, whether it’s her family back in the UK or her thousands of fans worldwide her idolise her and can’t wait to see her back to her best again. It would be a real shame if such a series of unfortunate events destroyed her professional wrestling career, and I believe she is too much of a strong character to ever let that happen.
Hopefully she can overcome all these obstacles and hurdles she’s faced this past year, and she now has a chance to look back, grow in maturity, learn from her mistakes and be ready to reclaim to turn a new Paige.
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