Bayley inspired as a generation of performers as one of WWE's original Four Horsewomen — and she's far from done.
In her 13-year tenure with WWE, Bayley’s damn near done it all. She’s WWE’s first women's triple crown and grand slam champion, reaching the top titles in NXT, WWE's main roster and tag-team divisions. She’s won Match of the Year and Wrestler of the Year in major publications, and has managed to reinvent herself time and time again to avoid stagnation. But perhaps what she’s done better than anyone else is help break down the barriers between rookies and veterans, between the big promotions and independent outfits. Still at the very top of her game as we wave goodbye to 2025, Bayley’s using her reputation and reach to make sure she leaves professional wrestling better than she found it.
As a final thank you to the business that made him a household name, John Cena wanted to help shine the spotlight on some of the newer WWE talents looking to follow in his massive footsteps. This weekend's Saturday Night’s Main Event marks the final match of Cena's career, and while his “Last Time is Now” tournament to determine his final opponent was won by multiple-time WWE champion Gunther, the bracket itself featured up-and-coming stars like Carmelo Hayes and Je'Von Evans. To further those opportunities, Saturday's show highlights new talents like Evans and NXT Champion Oba Femi. In its lone women's matchup, Bayley faces the high-flying, smooth-surfing Sol Ruca, a former gymnast from the University of Oregon whose corner somersault cutter — the “Sol Snatcher” — is quickly becoming one of the most impressive moves on WWE television.
While she understands the platform a show of this size provides a newer talent like Ruca, Bayley also knows how important it is for a veteran to show they can still keep up in an ever-changing business.
“When you're with WWE for so long, you kind of get in the groove of either working the same style or working the same people," Bayley tells Uncrowned.
"[Sol’s] a very special athlete that, no matter where she goes, whether it's in the wrestling ring or whether it's in the gymnastics arena, whether you're on the basketball court with her, whether you're on the track, whatever, wherever she is, she stands out.”
Ruca is part of WWE’s NIL initiative to find the best and brightest collegiate athletes and turn them into the organization's next crop of stars. So for Bayley, the Sol Rucas, Lash Legends and Kalani Jordans of the world bring in their athletic pedigree while also being able to say they learned the ins and outs of the business against savvy veterans like herself. “If I can hang with the new generation … [while also putting] someone like her in the spotlight, where not many people know how amazing she is, and in that spotlight with someone that has been there for so long, I think it'll only help her," she says.
"So it's a really good combination, a matchup that I think we will both benefit from.”
One thing that’s made it easy for Bayley to pay it forward is the relationship her and her fellow Four Horsewomen had with their own veterans. In her mind, they allowed women’s wrestling to grow by welcoming in her, Beckly Lynch, Charlotte Flair, the former Sasha Banks and others who came along during that time. So it only made sense to help the next crop of champions and challengers get to a point where everyone continues to benefit. “When we first came up, we had Natty, Naomi, Tamina … [they] opened the door for us," Bayley says, "and I feel that we did that for [acts like Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley]. The Four Horsewomen, one of the main things I think we were able to accomplish was show that women can work and that women could be larger than life characters that people will buy tickets to see.”
It seems to be working for everyone. While the Horsewomen continue to perform at the highest level, and Ripley and Belair are at their peak popularities, several of the talents who got the ball rolling are experiencing possibly the best years of their careers. Naomi’s heel run, sparked by conflicts of interest with Belair and newcomer Jade Cargill, helped her hit a creative peak almost two decades in. And it’s the same for Natalya Neidhardt, who’s tapped into her Hart Dungeon roots both on television and on the independents to stretch and strangle her competition. "[Those two] are the prime example of never settling," says Bayley.
"Coming up in January [Neidhardt will have been] here for 19 years, and she's just barely getting this character off of what she's been wanting to do for a long time. Naomi, same thing with her — for a long time she struggled and she was ready for change. … She had to go away and come back and still was kind of struggling in that — and for her to finally get that character that just stuck, I think it shows to any of the girls coming up, anybody who's been here for a few years that feels stuck or like they're never going to get anything off its feet ... keep pushing. Keep pushing and don't just settle and take it. Don't be jaded. Don't go feel sorry for yourself. Keep reinventing yourself and make sure that they notice you."
Bayley herself was born into an ecosystem that saw her and the then-Sasha Banks as the top women in NXT, then Charlotte caught fire on the WWE main roster, and finally, Becky Lynch became the top act, man or woman, in entire wrestling world. To Bayley, if you’re working hard and finding ways to connect with the audience, your time will come, whether that’s early on or later down the road — and that’s something she wants everyone, especially the younger talent, to embrace. “[Natty and Naomi] don't take no for an answer and but they do it in a respectful way," she says.
"They're just like the perfect leaders and the perfect examples of what we should all strive to be in the women's division.”
Bayley herself has found ways to stay fresh for more than a decade, even when it looked like her first gimmick was the easiest layup in wrestling. While John Cena spent 99% of his WWE run as its sainted super soldier, for her first seven years with the company, Bayley was their gleeful gladiator, hugging fans, friends and foes alike (with the latter being greeting with her signature suplex, dubbed the Bayley-to-Belly). Her tassels, streamers, and ponytail in tow, she was the purest of babyfaces parlaying her NXT run into winning the "Raw" Women’s Championship, and becoming the first-ever WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions alongside Sasha Banks.
Bayley eventually turned heel for the first time in late 2019, but struggled to find the same level of connection she’d had with the fans early on. “I remember talking to everybody about it, that if this character, a new character is going to work, we had to do a complete 180 from ‘Hugger’ Bayley," she recalls. "And so that's what I was really focused on, but I knew that because the audience had seen one character for so long, that it was going to be hard to make them believe that I'm really this person.”
That 180 of cheers didn't turn to boos, but instead silence. Like The Bloodline and The Hurt Business before her, the COVID-era Thunderdome served as her creative spark, as the only voices you’d really hear were those of the wrestlers, and of course, the announcers.
She found her muse in WWE commentary veteran Michael Cole, who became the target of her frustrations and displeasure. With every shortcut she’d take or hard hit she’d land, she’d make it a point to rub in his face, and her incessant pestering solidified her character with the online audience who couldn’t experience it in-person. “I was able to fully lock into this new character and just kind of branch out and try all these new things," she says. "Because there was no feedback [in real time]. What you see is what you're going to get, so the audience has no say in it. This is what I'm going to do.
"And luckily, it caught on. My only audience was Twitter and online, so luckily people were enjoying it and it kind of worked out for the better, but I do think it's because there weren't any fans.”
With tenure as a do-gooder and a ne'er-do-well both under her belt, Bayley was now able to weave in and out of different characters, from the savvy, solo vet that you root for to the grating, gloating host of her own talk show, “Ding Dong, Hello!”
It’s an interesting time in wrestling, where wrestlers with full-time employment can also be found across the independent landscape. For Bayley, she decided long ago that if there weren’t bridges between the heroes and hopefuls, she’d do her part to build them. You could catch her around the country, both in the crowds and backstage, taking pictures and offering advice. Then, finally, she fulfilled one of her major career goals this past year and started up her own wrestling school. True to her personality, she didn’t even want the school in her name, or having an offshoot of her on-screen exploits. She wanted to be a rock for the women on the rise, and she decided exactly what kind of rock after a memorable meeting with a doctor.
Having not had a true mentor until a few years into her career, she thought it was important to make herself available to the women looking to reach her level.
“WWE runs a yearly concussion meeting," she says. "I don’t remember how it came up, but [the last doctor to speak] started explaining what a lodestone rock was and how it's naturally magnetic.
"I've always had a dream of one day opening up a wrestling school … and ‘lodestone’ just kept popping in my head. And the more I learned about it and read about it, the rock is supposed to draw what you whatever you manifest and what you desire in life, whether it's wealth, love, success. That's the kind of person I want to be like — I want to be magnetic to people.”
Bayley's Loadstone training camp was open to independent female wrestlers of all styles and tenures. The inaugural class of women were coached up by not only Bayley, but her contemporaries such as Flair, Neidhardt, Belair and even newer main-roster acts like her tag-team partner Lyra Valkyria and Roxanne Perez. Maxxine Dupri stopped by the camp with pointers and words of encouragement. Even John Cena himself made an appearance, clad in his civilian black t-shirt and “Reckless LA” cap to help shine a light on Bayley’s endeavor. “Everybody had reached out to me, wanting to see how they can contribute and help and share anything with them," she says.
"Some of the girls just came to train because, as women, we don't get to be surrounded by other women, we don't have mentors coming up in the industry anymore. Three years into my career, I finally met Serena Deeb, who was like a mentor to me, but as women ... we usually train with all men, so it was just very, very powerful and very special in so many ways.”
Carefully picked and paired, Bayley’s curation for the initial camp not only gave women the chance to learn from some of the best, but to also be around the performers who will likely be their peers and rivals going forward. “The energy that carried through that whole week — I knew three or four of them from before, but everybody else was my first time meeting all the girls," Bayley says.
"I instantly felt connected to them. There wasn't one girl that seemed like she didn't belong. … They all were meant to be there, and I just felt that the first night I met everybody and had everybody in the house together.”
Having a singles bout on the same card as Cena might put pressure on some, but for Bayley it’s just one more chance to do what she’s always done: Adapt to what’s around her, and make the most out of her opportunity. She’s won gold at WrestleMania, she’s main-evented pay-per-views, she’s won title atop of title, but she’s never been at the end of an era. There’s a reason series finales gain viewers that have never even seen an episode — there’s something special about watching something reach it’s conclusion. “I was telling Lyra [Valkyria] the other day that like, ‘Yeah, I didn't get on WrestleMania [41], and yeah, I didn't get on SummerSlam. But this is my WrestleMania,’" Bayley says.
"[Cena’s going to have] so many people around the world — musicians, comedians, actors, like not just wrestling fans — watching.”
Beyond that, there’s a bond between the two of them that’s really grown as Cena's career’s come to a close. While they may have been coworkers and colleagues most of Bayley's career, she feels like she’s matured to the point where they can talk about life. “He’s someone who obviously has meant so much to the industry," she says of Cena.
"I've known him for a long time and have been able to spend time with him on live events and everything, but I really feel like these last two years for me, I was a mature enough performer and person to have real conversations with him. So as a wrestler, it means a lot to be on this show, but I think as a person, as Pam, to be on the show with him is just beautiful. It's an honor to be able to celebrate him. But this is my WrestleMania.”
She’s fought her friends, teamed with her enemies and shined the spotlight on talents you’d only know about from your local promotions, but everyone seems to have come out better than they began after being around her. Bayley, pro wrestling’s magnetic rock, pushes to make sure that when it’s time for her last time, she can enjoy the fact that so many of them will have benefitted from knowing her.
“I really want to be able to cement a legacy," she says. "I feel like I've done a lot of different things.
"I will say, there are two new championships [WWE's Women’s Intercontinental and United States Championships] that I've yet to win, so I haven't exactly done everything. And luckily this year has put like 10 chips on my shoulders. I'm still hungry.”
Category: General Sports
