McCool Talks About Maria: Wrestling Her, Turning Heel On Her, Diva Search + Beyond etc

http://michellemccool.net/wordpressing/index.php/2012/12/exclusive-michelle-talks-about-maria/

In General: “I don’t have one bad thing to say about her — she’s great! All the years that we were there together, which was pretty much both our entire careers on the road, not one altercation. Not one difference. We just got along. That all started through the Diva Search. Obviously, neither one of us won, but I remember watching RAW a few weeks after the Diva Search ended, and King was on commentary. He mentioned that one of the cast offs was going to be making their debut on RAW, then they opened up a magazine — and it was Maria! I got so excited for her, because her dream was coming true. She was one of the few [contestants] that actually followed wrestling, and she made no qualms about wanting to be an announcer. I just thought that was awesome.”

Life’s A Ditz: “She ended up with the ditzy gimmick for a while, but people don’t realize that she’s not ditzy — she’s actually extremely smart. Business-wise: she’s very savvy, and I admire that about her.”

Working with Maria: “She was on RAW for most of the time when I was on SmackDown, but there were several cross-over shows where we did get to work together — before she eventually moved to SmackDown when she got drafted. She was a fun babyface to work against; she can sell like crazy and the fans always got behind her. She was that underdog, and she was cool. She was all about business. She got it: she was willing to make sacrifices. She understood what some people can’t always understand; she understood that as a babyface, she was going to get beat up. She’d end up being able to return the favor, but she was never one to be like: “All I’m doing is getting beat up!” So, she was fun to work. I really enjoyed working her.”

Maria The Wrestler: “Everyone always said that she wasn’t a wrestler, and that she shouldn’t do this or that. I think it’s all about working together and working on people’s strengths — instead of trying to expose their weaknesses. I think that’s just what you have to do.” [...] “We didn’t have a long stint together, but she was really cool. She was a good worker, a hard worker… she was committed, and I was sad to see her go. I don’t know that we’ve seen the last of her, and I hope to see her again. I miss her — I think she’s going to do big things.”

Making The Transition: “I turned heel on Maria, and when I turned, I gave her a pretty good beating. She took it like a champ, an absolute champ! I remember Arn Anderson always used to say: “You can’t be a heel! I don’t want it, why are they turning you; I don’t want you as a heel!” Then, he ended up coming back to me and saying: “Why were you ever a babyface — you should have always been a heel!” Maria helped in that. You always want that one person that if you’re gonna make a turn, you’re gonna want to make the biggest impact possible — which, at the time, beating down Maria was making the biggest impact possible.”

Diva Search And Beyond: “I knew I liked her in the Diva Search, but then I remember watching her in the DVD, I don’t remember which one it was, but anyway, she ended up giving me a shout out. She was saying something about my body, and how cool she thought I was, and I was like: “Alright, I knew I liked this girl.” The friendship formed and the friendship hasn’t ended. I don’t think that it ever will.”

Here is the video:

Spoiler:

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McCool Talks About Maria: Wrestling Her, Turning Heel On Her, Diva Search + Beyond etc Hell_in_a_cell_2010_natalya_vs_michelle_mccool_015_original-271x300

On Day 2 of our “12 Days of Divas,” we have Michelle talking about The Queen of Harts, Natalya! Here are just a few highlights from Natalya’s clip!

First Meeting: “We kind of got off on a rough start (and i laugh about it now, we tease each other now). I remember we had a production meeting, and it was her first day there. I don’t talk during production meetings, people don’t generally say anything. She raises her hand and says she just wants to give everyone a tip on how to keep self-tanner on longer. At the time, I’m like, are you kidding me right now? She’s got nerve! I wish I had some of that, just an ounce of it in me to just be like: “Yeah, I’ve got something to say!” That was my very first encounter with her.”

Teaching Nattie how to “Wrestle”: “Apparently, something got all over the Internet about me trying to teach her how to ‘wrestle’ and all of this other stuff — which was completely false, as many things on the Internet are. But word got around, and there was nobody around the ring at the time, so it was just one of those things where ‘who felt the need to go to the Internet and start this stuff?’ It was just kind of shady. It was just kind of unspoken… there was a little bit of tension there. I don’t know if she thought I did it, or if she did it. A couple weeks went by, we sat down and talked about it and actually became really good friends.”

Polar Opposites: “We have two very, very different personalities. I’m more reserved, soft-spoken, and I have to get warmed up to people before I open up to them — and she’s completely opposite.”

Working with Nattie: “Obviously, she’s a great worker. That’s beyond words. She’s constantly showing up to the ring — you know when Nattie’s in the building, because she comes running down the ramp, slides in the ring and tries to leg-pick or take them down in some form or fashion. Which is awesome!”

Storyline with Nattie: “So, it was pretty late in my career, right before LayCool broke up. She was definitely fun to work with, a total team player. She would come up with stuff she’d want us to use. She’d be like: “Hey! Why don’t you say this about me?!” And we’d be like… really? We did her dad’s goatee thing, and she showed us all of that. She gave us other way on how to impersonate her dad, her or Bret. She was the one feeding us material, just showing us the type of business she’s willing to do. She knows what’s good for the business and knows that it’s just a character on TV.”

Trusting Nattie: “We could trust that the ideas we were pitching off one another weren’t going to be automatically shut down because she was going to end up saying something else. We really worked together, coming up with storylines, how to keep things going, fighting for every pay-per-view, fighting to get on TV. She was always willing to do something above and beyond. She just got it.”

Tables Match: “Our program ended at TLC. Fit Finley came up to us and told us we had a table’s match, and we told him to shut up — we didn’t believe it. We were always told that WWE didn’t want the girls to wrestle like the guys, your punches can’t look too good, and you can’t do punches or kicks, all of these guidelines, so we definitely didn’t think we were going to get a Tables match.”

Rehearsal for TLC/Near-death experience: “We had rehearsal the night before the pay-per-view, put some ideas together, go through some stuff — and oh, my gosh! You can ask Nattie: I’ve never had a near-death experience in my life until that night. It was so super-scary. I remember I was going to pull Nattie up in the corner for my Faith Breaker, off the top turnbuckle. Somehow, I go to pull her up, and we both tumble over the outside. All I’m thinking about is protecting her, but I’m looking down and my head is about to land on the apron and I’m about to break my neck, literally. My toes are curled over the top rope, just so that I can hold onto the both of us… I can see in slow-motion, Randy Orton, who was at ringside, is running over to help. Fit is across the ring and can’t help, and Arn Anderson was there — literally, we almost died. It was absolutely terrifying. But did it stop us from doing it? No. We figured it possibly couldn’t happen twice… right?”

Fighting for Nattie: “I remember fighting like crazy for Nattie to get the spotlight in that match, because not everybody was fighting for that. I thought: she’s the one that helped us; she’s the one that we were picking on during this whole storyline. She should be the one that pushes us through the table, she should be the one that gets her hand raised — she should be the one that puts LayCool to shame. She deserves this. And it was like, this hard, hard battle. That was her moment and I don’t think it would have been fair for anybody else to take that away from her or for anyone to try and take that away from her.”

» Maria talks about WWE divas and who her best diva is
» Diva Turning Heel?
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