Originally published at Saraya Jade-Bevis a.k.a. Paige writes farewell letter to WWE
Saraya-Jade Bevis a.k.a. Paige wrote a farewell letter to WWE for The Players’ Tribune one day before her contract with the promotion ends.
Bevis, who comes from a family of wrestlers including father Ricky Knight and mother Saraya, signed with WWE in 2011 and reported to Florida Championship Wrestling, and was given the ring name of Paige.
Her rise within the WWE system was dramatized in the film Fighting for My Family which was released in 2019 and featured actress Florence Pugh portraying Paige.
In the article for the Players’ Tribune, she spoke about the hardships she endured several years ago and the company sticking by her:
And a few years ago I got pretty close to the bottom.
It was like, almost overnight, so many things changed: Suddenly my neck was fucked and I couldn’t wrestle. I popped a drug test. My sex tape leaked. I got depressed. I started drinking. And I became less of an asset to WWE, and more of a liability, for a long time. I’m sure of it.
But they never lost faith in me — they never once threw me off to the side. They got me the help I needed when I needed help, and they gave me the time and space I needed when I needed time and space.
They even gave me a full segment on Raw to announce my in-ring retirement. I’ll cherish that for the rest of my life. Not just getting to make the announcement like I did, but also the respect it showed on WWE’s part, that they viewed me as worthy of that kind of treatment — the kind normally reserved for an Edge, or a Daniel Bryan, or an HBK, or a Hunter.
After FCW was rebranded as NXT, Paige won the women’s championship and had a breakthrough match with Emma at the inaugural NXT live special on the WWE Network in February 2014.
Weeks later, Paige debuted on Raw the night after WrestleMania 30 and beat AJ Lee for the Diva’s Championship in her debut match on the main roster.
Paige held the Diva’s Championship twice in her career, with both reigns occurring in 2014.
In her final run as an in-ring performer, she was paired with Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville as Absolution.
In late 2017, she sustained a neck injury that ended her in-ring career with WWE and she was assigned various roles including a stint as the General Manager of SmackDown and later managing the Kabuki Warriors, Asuka, and Kairi Sane.
The performer revealed last month that she would no longer be part of WWE after July 7th with the expiration of her contract.