One WWE Superstar is breaking her silence about her absence from television. Doudrop recently went to Twitter to answer a fan’s question about not being on WWE’s TV shows. She said, “I was very sick, but I am healing.” Doudrop also mentioned that visa issues aren’t why she’s been missing in action as it was updated in April.
This week, Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Radio said that visa issues are the reason why some talent from the United Kingdom hasn’t appeared on WWE’s programs recently. Doudrop talked about her visa on Inside the Ropes and said it’s the reason she could not compete in WrestleMania 38.
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“It was disappointing, I’m not gonna lie,” she said, per Wrestling Inc. “But at the same time, I completely understood why. Not a lot of people know this, but I actually had to leave the U.S. straight after WrestleMania to go and renew my visa in the UK. Because of a lot of different conflicts going on in the world and right now, it was going to be – they were unsure how long that process might take and I could have been in the UK for a month for as long as they knew. I couldn’t really have anything on the show because they didn’t know when I’d be back. Being there was great and everything. Just being able to sit there and watch it and take it all in. Got to meet so many cool people like the Undertaker and Steve Austin and get some advice from people and things like that and that was awesome.”
Doudrop (real name Kimberly Benson) is from Scotland and was called up to the main roster in June 2021 after spending two years at NXT UK. She began her main roster run as a protégé of Eva Marie. Doudrop has also competed for a world title, going up against Becky Lynch for the Raw Women’s Championship at last year’s Royal Rumble. During the summer, Doudrop won the 24/7 Championship twice.
On NXT UK, Doudrop went by the name Piper Niven. “I’ll give 100% full transparency about it, we did have a conversation about it,” Doudrop said in the Inside the Ropes Interview, per Fightful. “We did have a conversation about it. Because here’s the thing, before it was Vince’s vision and now it’s Triple H’s vision. So it’s like ‘What’s your vision and where do you see this going, are you open to ideas?’. For me, I don’t mind either way. I would just like to make more deliberate steps going forward with [my] character. I feel like for the past little while, things have [been weird]. When I was first [given] Doudrop, I obviously initially had no idea what to do. It took me such a long time to get comfortable with who Doudrop was.”
