Blake Monroe says the five-month wait for her SmackDown in-ring debut made her question herself.
Monroe told Dave LaGreca and Nic Nemeth on Busted Open that she was eager to get in front of the WWE audience the whole time.
“I love to work. I love to be out in front of the crowd. I love to win people over, and I can’t do that if I’m not out there. So I was chomping at the bit for five months dying to get out there, and I know better than anyone else that timing is everything,” Monroe said. “I’ve achieved things in my career that would not have happened if I didn’t fail 10 times before and that’s so many different things, big and small.”
“So I knew in my heart, timing is everything, but it does get to a point months in where you’re thinking, ‘Alright, I train, I go to the gym every day, I dress like a million bucks, I have my character, I have ideas. I want to be out there. I see other girls I think I could be better than them. I think if I had the shots they had and the opportunities they had, I would have done more with it,'” she continued.
Monroe said she kept pitching ideas every week until something stuck.
“There is that natural hunger and desire, and it can get to a point where you question yourself and think, ‘Why is this not happening for me?’ But ultimately, it’s such a huge machine, there’s so many moving parts. There’s unpredictable factors like injuries and other things that shift around,” Monroe said. “For me, it was just every single week turning up and saying, ‘I’m ready for this. Here’s 20 different things I want to do on the show until one of them sticks,’ and it did.”
“Now I feel like I’m on the show and you can’t ignore me. You cannot keep me in the back for another week. You cannot look at me and my peers and not use me now,” she added.
“I did have moments where I questioned myself, so let that be a lesson to everyone out there. Even The Glamour questions herself, but I remembered who I am, what I did to get here, and I just kept working harder.”
WWE aired a teaser vignette for Monroe’s main roster arrival in April. She made her SmackDown in-ring debut against Giulia on October 2 in Denver, and beat Giulia in a Street Fight last Friday in Ontario, California, finishing her with the Neutralizer. Commentary noted the two have feuded since their time in Japan.
Monroe debuted in NXT in June 2025 after leaving AEW, where she held the AEW Women’s World Championship as Mariah May.
