WWE star Bayley appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, where she discussed various topics, including her initial fear of being fired within the first month in the company.
Bayley said, “I thought I was going to get fired my first month because I wasn’t girly enough, cause I didn’t dress the part … one of my bosses I guess asked AJ to talk to me because I was not dressed appropriately as in like, I didn’t look presentable enough. She looked at him, kind of annoyed at him, and was like ‘I got it.’ And then grabbed my arm and talked to me for an hour … basically told me, ‘You don’t have to change yourself to get to where you want to be, but you do work for this company, so you need to meet them halfway’ … that again changed everything for me and that was when I started figuring out the hugger stuff.”
On the inspiration for her “Hugger” persona:
“The fans made that happen … my character came from Superstar Molly Shannon, Superstar the movie. That’s where I stemmed it from. I was like, ‘Okay I can have all the nervous antics like her and then I could just be a super fan.’ And Dusty [Rhodes] loved it.”
On how “Hugger” caught on after her match with AJ Lee on NXT:
“It was actually my match with AJ, we were doing something where I literally went to hug and I was just going to hug her as a fan, and then just me hugging her got a crazy reaction … the next match, they just started chanting like ‘Bayley’s gonna hug you,’ and that was never my thought of being like ‘Oh I’m gonna be a hugger,’ … but it was from that match.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
