Posted on 12/12/125 by Colin Vassallo
Chelsea Green sat down with Chris Van Vliet at INSIGHT Live
in San Diego, California to discuss winning the Women’s US
Tile for a second time, being paired up with Ethan Page in
NXT and why they work so well together, her husband Matt
Cardona (Zack Ryder) recently making a return to WWE, her
infamous dumpster match, being featured on Unreal and the
pitch to have her win the Royal Rumble, and more!
On Zack Ryder’s recent return:
“Okay, so I’ve never really worked with Zack Ryder. I mean,
we were ships passing in the night for years at the
beginning of our relationship, and then we only really came
together in TNA and kind of on the Indies for two years.
Then I was re-signed again. I kept yapping, running my
mouth, telling everyone he was going to return as Matt
Cardona, and I had to eat my words when he came back as Zack
Ryder. But it was really cool, because I’ve never had a
chance to just sit in the crowd and listen to everybody
react to Zack Ryder. I’ve never really been there for the
Woo Woo thing, except when I did it at Saturday Night’s Main
Event, or when I did it at All In, then I felt a little bit
of it. But it was really surreal. I knew that moment was
going to come. I think we had been hoping for that moment to
come every Rumble for the past five years. And it didn’t,
obviously, there was no Rumble moment. So I just didn’t
expect that this was going to be the moment.”
On preparing for the Zack Ryder return:
“So the crazy thing is that with WWE, they can say
something’s gonna happen, and until you are, I want to say
at the show, but even at the show, things can change,
because it’s live TV. So until I knew that LA Knight was
walking to gorilla, I couldn’t get excited, because I have
been on the receiving end of many of, ‘Oh, you’re gonna get
this.’ ‘No, maybe next week.’ ‘Oh, you are gonna go out
there and win.’ Oh no, you broke your arm. You know what I
mean? All those little moments. So it’s crazy how you just
[can’t control it]. So no, I could not get excited. But I
was a little excited when he was flying with me to New York.
And the morning of the show, I had Good Day New York, and he
came, and then as I’m walking out, TMZ was outside, and he
panicked, because it’s like, oh my god, everything’s gonna
be blown, and then he’ll never get the moment if TMZ sees
him.”
But it’s not unusual to see you and Matt Cardona together?
“But on the day when there’s a surprise opponent, do you
know what I mean? So we didn’t get too excited, but we
hoped. We really hoped this is gonna be the moment.”
On her 2014 debut segment with Stephanie McMahon:
“Okay, so it actually goes back to the day before. It was at
the time when you always heard about extras getting try-out
matches and actually getting a job, which I feel like you
never hear about anymore, because we’ve got these crazy,
elaborate try-outs. So I had just started wrestling, we were
in Abbotsford, I was an extra. I’m in this tiny, little
broom closet of a locker room. I heard one of the girls
outside talking to our talent relations guy. And the talent
relations guy was like, ‘Hey, if you have a passport,
tomorrow…’ So that would have been Sunday, and then tomorrow
would have been Monday night Raw. [They said] ‘Tomorrow
we’re going to do a spot we need an extra for [TV]. It’s
going to be quite a big spot. You’ll be speaking, but it’s
in Portland, Oregon.’ She was like, ‘I don’t have a
passport.’ In my head, I’m like, ding, ding, ding! I got a
passport. So I waited till she came back, and then I excused
myself to go to the washroom, and I found that talent
relations guy, and I said, ‘I can do it. I got a passport.’
And that is how I became Megan Miller. So it was so crazy. I
was dating this very sweet guy at the time, he had to drive
me to Portland, Oregon, sit in the crowd while I declared
that I had slept with Daniel Bryan. The funny thing is hours
before they gave me this script, one thing about WWE is they
tell you things without telling you things. They’ll give you
a script or they’ll tell you that you’re winning a title
without telling you, ‘Hey, you are winning this title
tonight at this time.’ They don’t do that. It’s kind of all
like wishy-washy talk. So they gave me this script, and it
says, ‘Stephanie, Megan, Stephanie Megan, Stephanie, Megan.’
I’m like, okay, who’s Stephanie and who’s Megan? I don’t
know why I have this script. Nobody tells me I’m Megan.
Nobody tells me it’s Stephanie McMahon. Nobody’s telling me
anything. I get out there and it’s like, Okay, we need you
for rehearsal. I haven’t even looked at this thing because I
don’t know who the f*ck Stephanie and Megan are. I go out
with the script, and Stephanie McMahon is in the ring, and
Vince is standing there with a microphone ready to rehearse
this segment where I’m Megan. So I’m trying to read through
like, Oh my god. I’m sleeping with Daniel Bryan. Oh my god,
I’m getting slapped by Brie Bella. Oh my god, I’m with
Stephanie McMahon. The whole thing was just [crazy]. I was
delusional. I was way too new to be in there. It’s the first
time I had ever spoken on a microphone, ever.”
That was your first promo?
“Ever! I had never picked up a microphone, I don’t even
think in high school. I’d done presentations in university,
that’s about as far as my public speaking skills went. So
imagine [how I felt]. They kept saying at the end, ‘Oh, you
did so good. You looked so nervous.’ Yeah, no sh*t! I’m
like, how do you hold a microphone? I don’t know. The whole
thing is so crazy, but so iconic. And Brie slapped the hell
out of me, popped my eardrum. It was amazing, honestly, it
was everything I could have ever dreamt of and more.”
On her dumpster match:
“I came up with that spot [the powerbomb ending]. Not to
toot my own horn, but toot, toot. I was gonna die on that
hill. I kind of talk about that often, like there are only
certain hills I’m gonna die on. Winning is not a hill I’m
going to die on, or getting a certain move in, that’s not
really a hill I’m going to die on. But when it comes to the
Money in the Bank ladder spot that going through the table,
being powerbombed into the dumpster, those are hills I’m
going to die on, because those are the things that people
are going to talk about forever. I believe that was the
first female dumpster match ever in WWE, there had to be
something huge at the end. Everyone’s going to talk about
the match, because it is a first, but it can’t just be a
powerbomb into a dumpster. That’s kind of boring. The boys
would never just do that. I always have to think about,
like, what are the guys gonna do? Because the guys are out
here doing crazy, crazy stuff. I want to make sure that
we’re doing equally as crazy stuff, so that there’s no
women’s wrestling and men’s wrestling, it’s just wrestling.
But do you know that the salsa that was in there was spicy?
I asked for salsa and cake to be in there, and they got
spicy salsa, and it was in my eyes, because I had to dump it
on my head to pop out, it was so painful. I don’t know if
you’ve ever had spicy salsa on your head, but don’t. I do
not recommend.”
On the WWE Unreal pitch to have her win the Royal Rumble:
“God bless Ed. I wish he never said it. I wish it never
aired, because now it won’t happen, that’s my thought. Is it
now we have to wait at least five years for it to happen,
and who knows where I’ll be in five years? When I watched
it, I didn’t know that. Everything that you saw in Unreal,
we’re not told these things. I thought that was such a good
idea. I hope that they use it. Well, for me, yes. But if not
on me, we need a Carmella to come back and do that. You know
what I mean? Somebody with some spice, a Billie Kay, someone
funny, who really would take that.”