Paige has worn a lot of hats in the last couple of years. After being forced to retire from wrestling due to injury, she became the General Manager of Smackdown, a job she was great at. After she was fired to make more room for Shane McMahon, she managed the Kabuki Warriors for a while, but that didn’t really work out. Now she’s landed as a panelist on WWE Backstage, FS1’s Tuesday night WWE talk show, which also features CM Punk.
On Corey Graves’ After the Bell podcast, Paige was asked how she enjoys having more freedom to express her opinions on Backstage. She obviously does enjoy that freedom, but it’s not quite enough for her (transcript via 411Mania):
Honestly I wish I got to have more. Because sometimes, you know you get a little bit pulled back. But obviously with [CM] Punk on the show now, since he’s working under the contract with FOX and not WWE, he can voice a lot more opinion. But I would love to go in even a little bit more. Like, I love to talk crap, honestly. And you know what? I feel like the crap that I talk is what the people say anyway. So it feels good, but I wish I got to do it more.
I don’t think anybody who knows Paige or has just watched her on Total Divas will be surprised to learn that she likes to talk “crap.” She also spoke about her non-WWE projects, which include clothing and makeup lines, and a big upcoming announcement that she hinted at without giving any information. However, she’s still paying plenty of attention to the WWE Women’s Division of which she was once a prominent member, and she’s not happy with how things are going at the moment.
Oh, don’t even get me started with that, dude … I don’t understand why we don’t have another girl’s PPV. We had that one-off deal, like what the hell is that about? Give us one every year, what the f**k? That’s the whole purpose, we had a women’s evolution for a reason. And you know what, f**k it. Let’s stop talking about the women’s evolution and actually just let the women do whatever they want. And I just feel like a lot of the girls are being held back. I love the Four Horsewomen, do not get me wrong. I love Sasha, I love Charlotte, I love Bayley, I love Becky. I love them all, but there’s a lot of women that should be given an opportunity … as much as I love those four, there are other women in the company.
I don’t know that it’s fair to focus on the Four Horsewomen, when women like Lacey Evans have been getting some attention, but she’s right that both the division and the amount of time they get on weekly (non-NXT) television has seemed to shrink considerably in the last few months. Since, as she notes above, nobody who works for WWE has complete freedom to run their mouths about the company, we can only hope that these comments (on an official WWE podcast) and Charlotte’s recent frankness on the same subject hint at a coming shit in WWE’s treatment of their women.
