Below are a couple of top news stories of the day, featuring Blair Davenport and Rob Van Dam.
• Blair Davenport Reveals Why She Couldn’t Change Her Look In WWE
Bea Priestley, known to WWE fans as Blair Davenport, recently spoke with Cultaholic about the creative limitations she experienced while with WWE.
One area where she felt restricted was her appearance. Bea wanted to get a tattoo on her forearm while in NXT, but she quickly found out it wasn’t a simple process.
She explained, “I asked to get an arm tattoo within the company, this is when I was in NXT, and they basically just kind of gave me this whole spiel.” According to Bea, getting the tattoo would have involved reshooting promo pictures, rescanning her for video games, and altering her overall branding. She admitted, “It just seemed like a lot of hassle. I was like, okay, it’s just easier for me to not do it than to do it.”
Bea also felt pressure to maintain her blonde hair, which WWE saw as her signature look. She said, “Even changing my hair color, I kept blonde for so long because they kind of identified that as my look.” She recalled that during her time in STARDOM, she had much more freedom and would change her hair color every month.
Bea noted that while some stars like Sasha Banks made significant hair changes as part of character shifts, she didn’t feel she had the same opportunity.
“When Sasha changed her hair color, it was because she turned heel after being babyface… I just felt like I never had enough behind me to do a drastic change like that,” she added.
Now that she has left WWE, Bea is embracing her creative freedom and has already gotten the tattoo she wanted.
• Rob Van Dam Reveals How Many Times He Failed WWE’s Wellness Policy Tests
Rob Van Dam has opened up about how he handled WWE’s marijuana testing policy during his returns in 2013 and 2014. Speaking on his 1 Of A Kind With RVD podcast, the WWE Hall of Famer shared the different approaches he took to the company’s $1,000 fine for testing positive back then.
“When I went to WWE for my return in 2013, it was a $1,000 fine at that time if you got busted for smoking marijuana,” RVD said. “I signed a three month contract, 66 matches in a course of 90 days. I decided on my own I would take a break from smoking because I hadn’t taken a break in a long time. It seemed like a good idea, so I stopped a month before starting with WWE.
When I gave my first pi$$ test, I did fail it, still, a month later because that’s how dirty my system was. Then I did the 90 days without smoking.”
When he returned in 2014 for a longer run, RVD took a different route.
“I left and came back the next year. I did a 5 month deal, 88 matches in 5 months,” he explained. “This time I was like, I could quit again, and I was just like, no. I’ll just smoke my way through it and pay the fines, and so I chose to do that. I got fined two or three times.”
He also recalled a conversation with WWE executive Mark Carrano from his 2013 return.
“In 2013, Mark Carrano said, ‘Dude, you failed the pi$$ test. You were supposed to come in clean.’ I said, ‘That’s because I smoked a month before and it takes 35 days to get out of your system. I haven’t been smoking since I’ve been here.’ It takes 35 days to get out of your system if you’re a heavy smoker.
If you just smoke a little bit here and there, you’re not looking at that many days at all, if it even shows up in your system. It all depends on how saturated you are.”
