Recently, Awesome Kong spoke to Chris Van Vliet to discuss signing with WWE and how Steve Austin, Jim Ross, and Mick Foley all personally contacted Vince McMahon about getting her signed.
The former WWE, TNA/Impact, and AEW wrestler also discussed trying to be a positive influence on women advocating for themselves in wrestling.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how WWE became aware of Awesome Kong: “Every girl who was sending in tapes of their best matches to WWE, I was on all these tapes, the matches with me. I never reached out to WWE, I never sent them a tape or anything. I had a plan of what I was going to do before I did that, you know what I mean? I didn’t want to be premature. I had a plan, but they called me before the part of me calling them had been implemented in my plan, honey.”
On how women’s wrestling has changed in recent years: “It’s just wrestling now, it’s not even necessarily women’s wrestling; they’re just workers out there now, going out there and doing the deal. They used to be like the women were popcorn matches, they’d always put us as second, the second match, so people could go to the bathroom or get their popcorn, hence ‘popcorn match,’ or whatever. And it’s getting much more respect now and women are demanding more respect now.”
On her influence for women advocating for themselves: “I’d like to say I had a lot of influence on women advocating for themselves, because honey, in TNA, I would not keep my mouth shut. You would think, ‘Girl, you just got in here, who are you to try to talk to the office like so?’ But I just couldn’t understand some of the things that were going on. I was like, ‘That’s backwards, honey, you can’t tell me that when Kong and Gail pop on a screen and you’re telling me that the numbers are spiking high – and those are the numbers that are highest all night – you can’t tell me I’m not worth X amount of money on paper.”
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