Several WWE performers are understood to be angry over Bayley's recent injury as it was said to be as a result of the extra, mandatory training the company put superstars through ahead of the return to live arenas.
The former SmackDown Women's Champion is expected to be out for around nine months after having surgery on her injured knee and, publicly, has blamed fans for it.
"You don’t care at all! You don’t care that I’m hurt," she said in a taped segment of SmackDown after getting hurt. "I did this to get better for Money in the Bank, I did this to be the best, I did this for you! So this? Yeah, this is all your fault! And I don’t give a damn who they put in my place because they are not as good as me.”
Privately, however, it's believed that the incident has been the subject of controversy as a lot of WWE wrestlers felt the extra training was unnecessary.
"The injury in mandatory training led to a lot of controversy and obvious second-guessing," The Wrestling Observer's Dave Meltzer was quoted as saying by Wrestletalk.com. "A number of wrestlers noted to me that they thought ring drills with the idea of getting people in shape when most of the key talent has been wrestling every week and to their credit, you almost never see anyone gas out in WWE, didn’t make sense."
An Unnamed Vet Chimes In
Meltzer also cited a quote from an unnamed veteran wrestler who said they never did any in-ring drills for conditioning.
‘I wrestled full time for 15 years. If you are in shape enough to do TV and PPV matches you need zero conditioning or preparation to go back on the road and do live events," the wrestler stated. "My entire regular career I never did a single in ring drill for conditioning. I did cardio at the gym sure but never additional ring time.
"The only time I did in ring drills for conditioning was when I took post “retirement” bookings and had to have a big match for the first time in a year or so but that’s because I hadn’t had a match in a year and was going to have to do 30 minutes at a top level. When I went from working 1 match a week locally. . to 7 nights a week I did zero drills to prepare. The only thing harder about 7 nights a week to once a week is the wear and tear on your body, so doing more wear and tear with drills to prepare makes it worse not better."
Bayley confirmed having undergone a successful operation via Twitter on Thursday night, poking blame at the WWE Universe again.