— Shelly Martinez appeared on the TSM Radio podcast (available on www.tsmradio.com) to discuss her wrestling career and present endeavors. Highlights from the interview are as follows:
How she entered the professional wrestling industry: “I always wanted to be a wrestler, since I was little. I saw Cindy Lauper involved and that was attractive to me, I loved Cindy Lauper. On and off I had this love affair with wrestling. I fizzle out, then I get back into it, fizzle out. Then after high school, I started modeling and acting and I would just talk about wrestling; I loved wrestling. A casting director remembered that, put me in an independent film about wrestling, met my first trainer and asked him how do I be a wrestler, and started going to wrestling school.”
She continues, “My goal wasn’t like, “Oh I’m going to be this actress/model, I’m going to use that to help me a be a wrestler.” This was before Tough Enough and all that, so I didn’t know how (to get into wrestling). How do I get there, what am I supposed to do? I didn’t know about indies.”
How she wound up in WWE after four years of wrestling: “I was doing some modeling for West Coast Choppers and I became friends with Jesse James. One day, I went to lunch with him. He’s asking me about wrestling and why I wasn’t in the WWF. I was like, “I don’t know how.” And he was like, “You’ll get a call.” And then a couple days later John Laurinaitis called me and that’s when I started my relationship with them. And it took about a year of them checking me out until they finally hired me.”
Describing the WWE environment: “It’s just weird. It’s like high school and you have your little cliques and you have the political people, like the ASB people, it’s just really weird! In fact, it’s so weird and bizarre, once I started to see what was up… see I got away with a little, that’s when I started to medicate. So I would get away, be disappearing, and be away from the negative things that were going on. And people would be like, “Oh, she’ll be with RVD getting high.” I’d be in the bleachers and I’d just be texting, but I’d kind of just make myself small so no one would pay attention to what I was doing, and I would just watch. It’s so weird. It’s like, “These people have a mini-drama going on, and these people are messing around, and that one’s married and they’re having drama.” It’s just really weird.”
Comparing her WWE experience to her time in TNA: “I was a different person in my life, in both of those times, so I really can’t compare it. In WWE, that was my first taste, it was like, “Okay, this is reality.” Again, it was weird. I was thinking, “Are these adults acting this way?” It was really strange. In TNA, it’s kind of like middle school, junior high and WWE was high school. So it’s like I went back and visited junior high and it was a piece of cake. They weren’t like the WWE. You know what it is? Because I saw everything I did in WWE when I went to TNA and I was able to not allow things to distract me.”
— In her latest Get In Shape For Summer video, Shelly Martinez explains how to eliminate food cravings.
