In Your Head Wrestling Radio recently interviewed former WWE
Diva Maria Kanellis. Below are some highlights:
Kanellis on the difference between wrestling the women in WWE and
the women on the independent scene::“It’s a lot more freeing. We
always had to stick to a certain time when I was working on television so you
really couldn’t try a whole lot. Getting in there and wrestling with some of the
new girls or the up-and-comers or girls that have been veterans on the
independents is completely different because we have all the time in the world.
We can play with the crowd, we can see what works, what doesn’t work, and that’s
really fun for me.”
On the rumors Mike Bennett didn’t go to the WWE because he was with
her: “I’ve heard a lot of things, but with wrestling you have to know
that everybody might blame it on different reasons. It’s always going to be ‘Oh,
it’s because he wasn’t in good enough shape’ or ‘Oh, it’s because he was an
independent wrestler’ or ‘Oh, it’s because he has something in his past’, and
the truth of the matter is wrestling is all about timing and placement and at
the time it wasn’t Mike’s time. It wasn’t his time to go. I’ve been called an
albatross, I’ve been called this and that, but at the end of the day it really
doesn’t matter. What matters is: ‘Is that what WWE needs right now?’, because if
he is what they needed they would take him. And if you look at past history with
wrestling, there’s been a lot of guys that came back that had a lot more
controversy surrounding them than I have. They always said Stone Cold won’t go
back, Rock’s not going to go back, this person’s not going to go back; when they
need them, when they want them, they end up going.”
Kanellis on what is most important to have as a woman in wrestling
between looks, charisma, and in-ring wrestling, or do you think you have to have
that whole complete package?: “I think you have to have something. I
don’t think it’s one particular look, I don’t think it’s one particular type of
charisma, and I don’t think it’s one particular type of wrestling. I think that
there is a place for everything; you just have to be extremely passionate about
it. You have to stand out. I think a lot of people thought I would never come
back to wrestling, and I think a lot of people thought that I wouldn’t have a
place in wrestling and I would just do whatever it was to make money. If that
were the case, then I probably would be somewhere else; I probably wouldn’t be
doing what I’m doing. I’m so very passionate about wrestling, and about being a
part of wrestling and making the best product out there, and I think that that
is what you need to stick around in this business. You’ll move around. You might
go to TNA, you might go to Ring of Honor, you might go to WWE, and each place
will expect something different of you, but you have to be passionate about
every aspect of wrestling in order to make it.”
