Michelle McCool appeared on Busted Open Radio. She went into detail on the late call she got from WWE about appearing in the Women’s Royal Rumble match.
She said, “There was a little bit of uproar on the internet which, power to the people, they kept guessing if I was going to be there, and I was not lying. I was like, ‘Nope, I mean, I’ll be there, but I’ll be there with my daughter watching like I normally do because she loves it.’ It’s right down the road. We planned on going anyway. My husband’s show was the night before.’ I wasn’t lying. I was like, ‘They didn’t call me.’ I would have loved to, obviously being in Texas, home state, whatever. So it was Thursday night and I got a call. I’m like, ‘Seriously, nine days before the Rumble you’re asking me to wrestle? I can’t even get ring gear made. I can’t get a ring shape.’ That’s a whole different ballgame. Y’all know, you can be in decent shape but ring shape is different. I was like, I can’t get gear made. The guy that called me said, ‘Just pull out some old ring gear.’ I’m like, ‘No, that’s kind of all we have when we come back is try to make a statement with your ring gear.’ I was like, ‘Let me think about it.’ So he’s like,’Just sleep on.’ I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t know.’ Then I was like, you know, my daughter, she still likes to see it every once in a while. So I said, ‘Okay, I can’t get ring gear made. What if I come out of the audience?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I like that.’ I go, ‘Can I wear my Uggs and my sweatpants?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, done.’ So I was like, ‘Alright good. If I get to wrestle in my sweats and Uggs, I’m in.’ So, I took some crosses off my old gear, put them on my sweatpants, and literally, that’s how that happened. So I didn’t lie to the people though.”
On why she retired from WWE in 2011:
“You hear about the Women’s Evolution and of course, you hear about the Attitude Era with Trish and Lita and Jazz and Ivory and Victoria which all were amazing, obviously. Then our little Diva era kind of just gets skipped over.”
“We had to fight and claw. I think even on my retirement match, I think we were given 12 minutes with entrances. So probably, you know, nine minutes of wrestling, and we thought that was a rib, like, we’re getting this much time, because normally we had two or three.”
“I grew up loving the business, and when you love something so much, and then you start not enjoying it as much because of whether it’s, you know, obviously I married a top guy, right? So clearly, I got everything because of who my husband is and not the hard work that I put in. There’s that aspect of it. Then there’s just all this chaos around all the time. We really were just fighting for our spot. We didn’t know if we would be on TV the next week, so it was hard, but I wouldn’t change it. I’m not afraid to fight. I’m not afraid to work for what I’ve got. In fact, we’re just lecturing our daughter about that, but it was hard, and it was stressful, and it broke my heart to retire.”
“I started not liking something that I love so much. It wasn’t an overnight decision. It was like a two year process. I talked to Vince about it and he’s like, ‘Whatever you want to do, you’ve got my blessing. Whatever you want to do, you just let me know.’ I’m just like, I don’t want to hate something that I absolutely love and adore, and that’s what was happening slowly, you know, day by day, week by week. So it wasn’t an overnight decision.”
“Still, it wasn’t easy to step away. It was rough after that for a little while because you look back or you start watching, and you’re like, ‘Dang, I wish we had a little bit of that.’ I’m happy for the girls, obviously, but gosh, just a little bit would have been so nice. It makes now a thousand times better. I’ve never felt more loved by the fans than when I came out on Sunday. You know, we didn’t get that. That was just super special and I truly just appreciate that so much more because of how things worked when we were wrestling years ago.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Busted Open Radio with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Busted Open Radio can be heard on SiriusXM’s Fight Nation (Channel 156), Monday through Saturday from 9 am to Noon eastern.
