Paige Discusses Potentially Facing Alundra Blayze, Divas Revolution, Dusty Rhodes And More
In less than two weeks, Paige has a shot at becoming a three time Divas Champion (one of her self-proclaimed remaining goals for the rest of the calendar year) when she squares off against Charlotte at this year’s Survivor Series PPV, but this week WWE is touring all over Europe and hitting her home country of the UK, so she’s doing some promotional work in the media with The Mirror. It’s a lengthy questionnaire discussing a number of interesting topics.
Perhaps what’s most interesting is Paige’s reluctance to rule out a possible match with Alundra Blayze, as the two have had a bit of a social media tussle going on for the past few weeks. It all started when Blayze criticized the Divas Revolution, and specifically Paige. Here’s what Paige had to say when asked about a future match:
Oh absolutely, I mean it’s not something that’s going to happen, but hopefully someday it could, and if it did, I would definitely do it. If she wants a match I will 100% give her a match. I don’t know if she can still go though! She’s probably not been in the ring for about 15 or 20 years… but if she wants to go, let’s go. She’s definitely someone, Alundra Blayze and Bull Nakano were like my heroes, but I don’t know about that now.
The current concern over whether Blayze can still go or not is certainly valid, but at the end of the day, if male competition can consistently bring back legends like The Undertaker and The Rock for big-time matches, then I don’t see the harm this could do for the female superstars. At the end of the day, anything different and refreshing from random matches receiving no story and wrestling time is a step up. Personally, I’d rather see Lita come back for one more match against one of the newer talents, but any legend would be exciting to a degree.
Paige also discussed Dusty Rhodes’ tragic passing, citing him as her “American dad”. No, she doesn’t mean Stan Smith from Seth MacFarlane’s animated television series, she means the term literally.
Oh Dusty, yeah he was my American dad. He taught me a lot. It’s hard to talk about him because I get really upset. He was amazing, an amazing human being, he had a thing for the misfits, the broken toys. If you were already perfect he wanted to work with you but he was more interested in projects and people who didn’t look like they stood a chance. Then he could fix them up, shine them up and send them on their way. He really invested in the talent.
Dusty was obviously a key influence on her WWE career, so it’s natural that it’s difficult for her to discuss. He was a prominent figure in improving her microphone work, which is something she now feels comfortable doing on a weekly basis.
I love being on the microphone and that just makes you better as well, because after you haven’t been on the microphone for a little bit, you get extremely rusty and it gets very hard. They are giving me more time, literally every week they are giving me a promo, and I’m doing it live, which is tough, but I love doing them because it just makes me better.
What I really admire and respect however, are Paige’s comments on the Divas Revolution. She’s ambitious to keep it on an incline and open to tantalizing ideas such as main-eventing traditional PPVs or an all-Divas PPV, which is something WWE should really work on. It’s pretty much the only thing TNA has ever done right or better than WWE.
That’s definitely a goal, you know, it’s a big dream doing it at WrestleMania, but hopefully I really think we could do a pay-per-view one day or even an all-female pay-per-view. We have enough Divas and down in NXT now, we could really do that, even on the WWE Network. I definitely think we could main event one day, so hopefully, fingers crossed.
I strongly advise checking out the full interview for more, such as working with PCB (and more specifically reuniting with Becky Lynch after having worked together on the indy scene at the ages of 13), Paige Bombs, and her meteoric rise to stardom within the company.