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The ThunderDome Era has finally come to an end. WWE is back on the road this Friday night when SmackDown goes live from the Toyota Center in Houston, TX. When you look back on the 16 months of pandemic wrestling in WWE, the argument can be made that no one's collective body of work rivals that of Bayley.
From the first match inside the empty WWE Performance Center all the way to her promo last week, Bayley was there. Her work the past year and a half has been praised by fans and colleagues alike, but it's not just what she did in front of the TV camera that's getting high marks from those in the company.
The Best of All Time Natalya appeared on this week's episode of The InSide Kradle, and went out of her way to rave about Bayley's demeanor behind the scenes.
"She really made work better. She made work better for everyone and she was just such a rock star during the ThunderDome Era," Natalya said. "Even though she played the role of a bad girl on TV, she just made everything fun."
So much of what makes professional wrestling great is the live crowd. Wrestlers live and die by the roar of the fans. When that was taken away last year, Natalya says it was Bayley who kept pushing everyone backstage to make the best of a bad situation.
"She reminded all of us that... we may not have all the resources that we want, because we don't have our audience right in front of us, but let's interact with each other. Let's yell at Michael Cole. Let's be silly. Let's be goofy. Let's turn it up. Let's just make the best out of this. So she's truly been an inspiration to myself and so many others at work."
After not being booked to compete at WrestleMania 37, Bayley was scheduled to have her first match in front of fans this weekend. Unfortunately, WWE's Role Model suffered a knee injury last week and will be out of action for quite some time.
Bayley reportedly won't be able to compete for nine months
This coming Sunday at Money in the Bank, Bayley was supposed to challenge Bianca Belair for the SmackDown Women's Championship in an I Quit Match. Instead, Carmella will now challenge Bianca for the Title on SmackDown after Bayley suffered a pretty bad knee injury during training.
Fightful Select reported that the former SmackDown Women's Champion was chain wrestling with another wrestler when her knee "popped." Fightful was told the incident was a freak accident.
Always a professional, Bayley appeared on SmackDown last week to confirm the injury and even kayfabe blamed the fans for what happened to her.
While there has been no confirmation from WWE on the severity of Bayley's injury, PWInsider reported the belief is that she suffered a torn ACL and is expected to be out of action for close to nine months.
Check out our full conversation with Natalya during this week's InSide Kradle in the video above. Also, make sure to follow Sportskeeda Wrestling on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube for more exclusive interviews in the future.
Bayley gives us a HUGE update on a top Superstar's upcoming return RIGHT HERE.
