Kay Lee Ray is giving more context on how her WWE exit actually happened, and she says the situation wasn’t a shock to her.
While speaking to Busted Open Radio, Ray said her previous comments may have been taken the wrong way. She explained that she had already been thinking about whether she wanted to re-sign with WWE, but because she had been with the company for so long, she wanted to give them the courtesy of having that conversation first.
“I think in the last one I did, maybe the words were a little bit misconstrued. I had been thinking for a while if I wanted to re-sign or not. But as I said before, I’ve been with WWE for a long time. So I at least wanted to give them the courtesy of having that conversation.”
Ray said her contract was only a few weeks away from expiring when she tried to speak with WWE during WrestleMania season. She knew everyone was busy, so she wasn’t asking for an immediate decision, but she wanted to start the conversation soon.
“I knew my contract was up in three weeks by the time I spoke to them, maybe four weeks. It was at Mania, so I was like, ‘Look, I know we’re really, really busy right now. I’m not asking to have that conversation now, but can we have that possibly soon?’”
Things moved quickly after that. Ray said she got a phone call the following week informing her that WWE would not be offering her anything new. Since she was already leaning toward leaving, she accepted the decision and didn’t treat it as a major surprise.
“Then unfortunately, I got the phone call the next week saying that they didn’t want to be offering me anything. On that, I was like, ‘Cool, this was the decision I was already heading towards anyway. If that’s the way we want to go, that’s fine.’”
Ray also said the timing made things look like a standard post-WrestleMania release, but her case was different because her contract was already coming up. She pointed out that releases and firings often happen around that time of year, and her contract ending simply fell into that same window.
“So, yeah, it wasn’t a surprise to me. Again, it’s kind of like a pattern recognition. You know, that time of year, after Mania, there’s going to be releases, there’s going to be firings. My contract was just up and it fell at that unlucky time.”
Still, Ray said she doesn’t really view the timing as unlucky because she was already thinking about getting back to wrestling in a more active way. If that wasn’t going to happen in WWE, she was ready to find somewhere else to do it.
“I don’t even want to say unlucky because, as I said, I was already thinking like I want to get back to wrestling. I want to get back to putting it all out there. So if I wasn’t going to get there, then where are we going to do it?”
This comes after many fans believed she was part of WWE’s post-WrestleMania talent cuts on April 24, which saw the likes of Zoey Stark, Zelina Vega and others get released. Fyre had been featured on SmackDown as part of Chelsea Green’s Secret Hervice alongside Piper Niven before quietly exiting the company. Prior to that, she enjoyed a successful WWE run that included becoming one of the longest-reigning NXT UK Women’s Champions in history and later capturing the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship with Isla Dawn.
She was not released in the same way as talent hit with a 90-day non-compete, but WWE also chose not to offer her a new deal before her contract expired. That left her free to return to the independent scene right away and bring back the Kay Lee Ray name. For now, Ray seems focused on wrestling again without being locked down. After years under contract, she sounds ready to see where the next chapter takes her.
Do you think Kay Lee Ray made the right move by moving on from WWE? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
