Bea Priestley: They Told Me I Would Be Joining The Secret Hervice And Six Days Later I Was Out Of A Job

Bea Priestly (Blair Davenport in WWE) was drafted to WWE SmackDown in the 2024 WWE Draft, moving on from WWE NXT.

She was briefly in a feud with Naomi before being off television for an extended period of time at the end of 2024.

Speaking on That Sweet Pop with Dion McCracken & Brad Lewis, Priestly was asked about the uncertainty surrounding her move to SmackDown at the draft.

“That was essentially what happened. This isn’t going to sound how I mean it to sound because I’m very happy for all of my friends. It’s just a reflection and my experience. Kiana (James) and Lyra (Valkyria) go to Raw, and I go to SmackDown. Smackdown, you’re lucky if you get two girls’ matches on one SmackDown anyway, because SmackDown was only two hours at the time, and Raw is three. Lyra, straight away, is doing the Queen of the Ring tournament stuff, and that was awesome for her. They did have some idea with me, but two weeks after I got moved to SmackDown, the head writer changed to a different head writer, so all of my initial conversations weren’t known. The general writer that I had, she had only just been promoted to a writer, so I think she was a little worried to push for me because she was new in that role. I think she was going with the flow rather than being like, ‘Why don’t we do something with Bea.’ No disrespect to anyone, because I was the same way on SmackDown. I wasn’t going to step on anyone’s toes. I was going to do as I was told because I’m new here. There were times when I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on.’ There were talks about tagging with Isla and Alba and us being a trio in the Unholy Union because we were doing six-woman tags against Bianca, Jade, and Naomi. That was a conversation. ‘We might put you with these guys, but we’re not sure.’ It got to the end of the year and I had a triple threat with Bianca and Chelsea, that was my last match.

“I did a backstage with Piper in January and that was alluding to me doing stuff with Chelsea and Piper in the Secret Hervice. I was basically told I would be on the Europe tour in March. I had all my flights, [Talent Relations] came to me and was like, ‘You’re going to be super busy doing stuff with Chelsea and Piper. Get ready for it.’ I had one of the writers come to me, talking to us about what they wanted me and Piper to be wearing, how they wanted us to behave, all the gimmicks. It was happening. ‘In two weeks, we’re doing Chelsea and Michin, you’re coming in to cost Michin and joining Chelsea.’ It was exactly how they did it with Alba. I was like, ‘Cool.’ Six days later, I’m out of a job.”

Alba Fyre ended up joining the Secret Hervice with Piper Niven and Chelsea Green.

During part one of the interview, Priestley revealed AEW offered Piper a contract, but she had already agreed to join WWE. You can find the story here.

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