John Cena Helped Bayley See The Potential Upside In Meeting The Challenge Of Working Without A Crowd

Bayley’s mindset towards COVID-era shows changed with one conversation.

Speaking on the latest episode of Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette, WWE’s Role Model was asked about the challenges of working without fans, sharing what John Cena said that altered her approach. Bayley also added that she was fortunate to be paired with Sasha Banks at the time, which gave her someone to play off of. Here is what she said:

“On the first day, I remember talking to Daniel Bryan, and [John] Cena was there. They were having a conversation and Cena was like, ‘I’ve done everything, but I haven’t done this. I haven’t been in a WWE ring on TV with zero fans. It’s a good challenge and will be something new for me to learn.’ That instantly changed my whole mindset. If we can do this, we can do anything. I went into that mindset of ‘we have to prove we can do this without fans and prove our characters…’ that we don’t have to lean on that, even though our shows are 90% fan interaction. I’m really lucky to have Sasha with me because I could play off her.”

When the pandemic began and WWE moved their shows to the Performance Center, Bayley held the SmackDown Women’s Championship, as well as the Women’s Tag Team Titles with Sasha Banks. This allowed them to appear on all of WWE’s brands. Bayley held SmackDown’s top prize until October 2020 at Hell in a Cell.

WWE moved to their current ThunderDome setup in August 2020, introducing video boards, pyro, and piped in crowd noise. Today, an end-date was given to WWE’s next residency in Tampa, Florida.

If you use the quote above, please credit Oral Sessions with Renee Paquette with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.