There’s been a lot of attention paid to Blake Monroe’s WWE career. That’s true of any highly-touted prospect the company brings in, but it was amplified for Monroe because she signed the contract for her WWE dream job immediately after leaving AEW at the end of one of that promotion’s most successful programs ever.
Debate about the former Mariah May continued throughout her NXT run, and some were ready to declare Monroe wrong for betting on herself when her didn’t have a match on SmackDown for five
months after being called up earlier this year.
Monroe told WWE Radio’s Busted Open today (Oct. 30) that injuries were a factor in the delay. She didn’t specify who or what was hurt, but it doesn’t sound like she was banged up. From there Blake gave an (at least partially in-character) answer about the importance of properly introducing a star of her magnitude:
“SmackDown wanted me and they made a play for me, and I do think injuries changed a lot of things. And it’s just finding the right moment to debut someone like Blake Monroe. I’m not somebody that you just throw out there. I’m not somebody that will ever get lost in the shuffle. I’m not just the next girl. I’m ‘the girl,’ and I think it was all about waiting for the right time, the right story, the right opponent to show that I’m not just a pretty face and a big character, I can actually go in the ring.”
The wait brought self-doubt, but the 28-year-old from England pushed through it:
“I love to work. I love to be out in front of the crowd. I love to win people over, and I can’t do that if I’m not out there. So I was chomping at the bit for five months dying to get out there, and I know better than anyone else that timing is everything. I’ve achieved things in my career that would not have happened if I didn’t fail 10 times before and that’s so many different things, big and small.
“So I knew in my heart, timing is everything, but it does get to a point months in where you’re thinking, ‘Alright, I train, I go to the gym every day, I dress like a million bucks, I have my character, I have ideas. I want to be out there. I see other girls I think I could be better than them. I think if I had the shots they had and the opportunities they had, I would have done more with it.’
“There is that natural hunger and desire, and it can get to a point where you question yourself and think, ‘Why is this not happening for me?’ But ultimately, it’s such a huge machine, there’s so many moving parts. There’s unpredictable factors like injuries and other things that shift around. For me, it was just every single week turning up and saying, ‘I’m ready for this. Here’s 20 different things I want to do on the show until one of them sticks,’ and it did. Now I feel like I’m on the show and you can’t ignore me. You cannot keep me in the back for another week. You cannot look at me and my peers and not use me now.
“I did have moments where I questioned myself, so let that be a lesson to everyone out there. Even The Glamour questions herself, but I remembered who I am, what I did to get here, and I just kept working harder.”
Hard work finally got The Glamour in the ring this month, and she picked up back-to-back wins over former Women’s United States champion Giulia. Will she be able to keep that momentum going? Will folks go back to worrying about Giulia now?
Sound off below.
