Everyone’s favorite NXT Superstar, Bayley, made her long- (long, long, long-) anticipated debut on Sunday night at Battleground, despite not being selected in last week’s WWE Draft. On a recent episode of Chris Jericho’s “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, Bayley (whose real name is Pamela Martinez and who wrestled on the independent circuit as Davina Rose before signing with WWE) explained how she came to have her current ring name.
Amusingly enough, she absolutely did not want the name at first, but the higher-ups forced her hand. Still, she managed to make one little change that has made a whole world of difference. (Transcript courtesy of the wonderful people at Cageside Seats.)
“I gave like a list of names that I wanted to use and I tried using my indie name and they wouldn’t let me use it. I was kind of thinking of … what’s that word that it could be used as a male or female name? Yeah, so, I was trying to pick names like that. … But I was throwing out names like Bobby or Jordan, something like that because I was like ‘I don’t want it to be super girly, like I don’t want to be Patricia or something.’ I don’t know if that’s girly but I was thinking of it, (like) Jennifer. Bailey was one of them and that was like the last one I wanted. I did not want that name.
“They gave me three choices and I forget what the other one was but one of them was Davia, which is not Davina, and I was like ‘are you guys missing the ‘n’ or … ?’ They’re like ‘no, Davia.’ I’m like ‘that’s not even a name.’ … I was like ‘man, I guess I’ll just go with Bayley.’ … It was with a ‘i’ and I was like ‘okay, I’ll choose this… because I was ready to send in another list of names because I was just not happy, I’m like ‘okay, if I choose this one I have to spell it B-A-Y because I’m from the bay area’ and I thought I was so cool. Yeah, it has to mean something to me. So then I went with that and now I love it.”
The fact that she wanted the name “Davina” and they countered with the name “Davia” is pretty hilariously in keeping with everything fans always suspect about how WWE works. But just take a minute to think about whether you’d love her better or worse if her name was “Bobby.”
At the bare minimum, there would be a 400 percent increase in you doing Hank Hill impressions while watching wrestling (on average).
