Maria Kanellis recently spoke with Wrestling Life Online for an interview.
The following are some of the highlights.
On how she doesn’t believe she deserved to win the TNA Knockouts Championship back in September of 2016: “For the story, it was awesome. For where the division was at, it worked. Because if you take something away, then people want it more. It’s that old saying of playing hard to get, and I think at the time, it worked perfectly. I was so blessed to work with such amazing women. I was working with Chelsea Green at the time. I was working with Allysin Kay. I was working with Gail Kim. Mia Yim, she was there for a little bit of the time that I was there, Rosemary. There was just such a fantastic group of women that were working there that… I didn’t really deserve the title because I wasn’t really ‘wrestling’ wrestling. But as far as for the championship itself and for the story, I think it worked really well.”
On how she didn’t get to accomplish everything she wanted to in AEW: “So with my time in AEW, I feel like I didn’t really get to accomplish everything that I wanted to. I appreciate the opportunity. I appreciate the fact that I got to work with such tremendous talent. But it just-I got my tumor right around the time my contract was ending, and so it just kind of ended, and it’s sad for me because, you know, I had so many years in the wrestling industry and so many fantastic memories, and for it to end that way was really disheartening, and it just, it was bad timing, and, you know, Tony Khan was very sweet about, you know, wishing me well on my tumor and everything like that. But for me, professionally, I just felt like I could do more.”
Watch the complete Maria Kanellis interview via the YouTube player embedded below.