During a recent appearance on the AEW Unrestricted podcast, The Kingdom’s Maria Kanellis-Bennett discussed her WWE run during the Divas era where she played a ditzy character on weekly television.
Kanellis also explained why she sees ‘Divas’ as a positive term in pro wrestling.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On the ditzy character she was given early on in her WWE career: “I’m thankful for it now, but I was pissed when they made me ditzy. I fought against that from the time I was young. … So as soon as they were like, ‘We’re gonna have you be ditzy and dumb,’ I was like, ‘aaaaahhhh!’ It was my worst nightmare at the time. I’m so grateful now, because of that, and being that kind of character I got to work with everybody, because they could play off of me. They could get their characters over because I was ditzy.”
On her thoughts on the WWE Diva Era: “I think of diva as a very positive term in terms of wrestling because if you think about who was considered a Diva, it was Mickie James, Beth Phoenix, Michelle McCool, Kelly Kelly, Melina, Jillian Hall, the Bella Twins; all these people who are still making an impact in this industry were considered ‘Divas.’ So how can that be a bad word?”
