Blake Monroe made her main-roster debut on “Friday Night SmackDown” and beat Giulia in her first match, but it was her entrance gear, not the win, that drove fans to ask questions.
Monroe had built a following in NXT for an entrance where cameras showed her checking herself in a vanity mirror before stepping into the ring. Fans expected that same bit for her SmackDown arrival. Instead, she walked out in a sheer robe trimmed with showgirl-style feathers, and some fans were let down. They didn’t know the backstory.
Monroe laid it out in an Instagram post. She said her path to WWE started nine years ago, and the night before her first training class she was terrified.
“My journey started 9 years ago. I remember the night before my first class – I was so nervous. I had done theatre for years and never felt anything close to this level of fear,” she wrote. “I pulled up outside the school gym that morning and didn’t even want to get out of my car. My heart was thumping and my stomach was in knots. I was ready to turn back, and then I saw a feather on my windshield.”
She explained that her grandmother had died a few months before that day, and the feather felt like a sign from her.
“A few months earlier, after years of battling illness, my grandmother passed away. She was the coolest, toughest woman I had ever met. She wore a mini skirt and rollers in her hair until the very end. They say feathers are a message from someone in heaven. It sounds silly, but in that moment I felt like my grandmother was with me, telling me to step through those doors and give my dreams a chance.”
Monroe called chasing that dream “the best decision I have ever made.” Then she turned to what happened just before her SmackDown debut: her grandfather died a few weeks earlier, and she didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.
“I know you waited 5 months… I waited 9 years, and pretty much my whole life for this moment! But sadly, a few weeks before my debut, my lovely grandad passed away. I didn’t get to say goodbye. It was heavy in my heart.”
She said she kept it to herself and tried to push forward without canceling anything. Then, while getting her hair done for television the next day, her hairdresser found a feather in her hair.
“I truly have no idea how it got there. But I felt like it was my grandad saying hello.”
That’s where the feathered fan entrance came from. Monroe said it reads like “a burlesque and Great Gatsby dream,” but it carried more weight than that for her.
“Last night I felt like my grandparents, who are together again now, were holding my hands for one of the biggest moments in my life. In a country where I am all alone, following such crazy dreams. It’s easy to feel lonely and scared, but last night I had never felt so strong. They were with me in those wonderful feather fans.”
In the match itself, Monroe defeated Giulia after blocking a move attempt off the top turnbuckle that left Giulia knocked out, allowing Monroe to score the pin.
Monroe signed with WWE last year and debuted in NXT in June 2025, where she held the NXT women’s North American championship before her call-up to the main roster.
