WWE broadcaster/interviewer Cathy Kelly is the latest guest on “INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet”
Kelley talked about how she got started in WWE:
“It was actually through Ryan Katz. He was actually working very close with Dusty at the time and they were putting on this women’s tryout, which is essentially where I think JoJo got called up, Eva Marie, Lana, a couple other people, and I remember Ryan saying, ‘Hey, I think you should do this.’ I was scared sh*tless. I said, ‘No, I’m good. I want to work at WWE, but I don’t see myself being a superstar’, and that’s what the trial was for. So a few months later, I saw a couple of the girls from that tryout ended up being in backstage roles and I was really bummed that I didn’t capitalize on that opportunity.”
“I think it was maybe a few months later. I was working with Sam Roberts at the time and he was very close to Michael Cole. So I kind of stayed in touch with Michael Cole. Then there was an opportunity to do live event hosting, which I tried out for. They brought a bunch of people to Orlando and we got to sit in on a NXT show. I think a couple people have tagged me back in the day from just sitting in the audience during that. I was told that I was going to be starting soon. They ended up having a hiring freeze a couple months later. So that got prolonged. They ended up hiring internally, but two years later, another opportunity opened up and that was in Stanford.”
On leaving WWE:
“It was really tough. I struggled with it for probably about a year, and it was, you know, partially promises that were made when I started and trajectory of where I wanted to see my career go and it didn’t feel like that opportunity was going to come to fruition, which was, you know, being on one of the main shows, being on either RAW or SmackDown as a backstage interviewer. While I was doing that at NXT, they said that I wasn’t ever probably going to be on a main show, and that was my, my catalyst.”
On what she did when she left WWE:
“I had to sit and I had to learn other skills. I taught myself how to write, so I ended up writing a horror screenplay. I ended up writing a pilot with another friend and working on other projects that hopefully will come to fruition one day. Hopefully the world will get to see, but I worked on a lot of different skills and then I worked on my mental health because it was really not in a good place when I left.”
Thoughts on Triple H and Stephanie McMahon:
“I credit Stephanie and Triple H to being the reason why I’m back, but the fact that they always believed in me when I was there, and they were, you know, two of the people who requested me to be on anything that they were a part of. I never felt like I wasn’t doing cool things when I was there. I very much am grateful for all of those opportunities, especially the ones that they gave me, but it was really because they were in these leadership roles now that I came back, and I feel like I was allowed to have those opportunities.”
On her goals now that she has returned to WWE and is on the main roster:
“The goal now, I think, is just keep doing what I’m doing. I have thought about potentially, I would maybe love to get involved in more storylines in the future, whether that’s in my role or in a different capacity. Then I want to continue to write on my time off. I want to potentially work on some other acting roles and hosting roles outside of WWE, but I don’t see myself leaving the way that I did last time.”
On creating The Bump:
“I created The Bump. That was actually a really long process for getting that one done, but Talking Smack was another one of my favorites. It was originally supposed to be called WWE Eats, but we also like the other play on words. I mean, it was a very collaborative effort, but even coming up with the WWE Now brand that is still around today. At the time, I think when I started at WWE, the digital space was still, you know, a fraction of what it is now. There was really not any subsidiary content. They just took a lot of the clips from the shows and throw them on to YouTube and hoped for the best. As you know, YouTube is a beast in itself. There’s algorithms, there’s editing, there’s, you know, you have to have the right photo for people to click on all of the things. So it was just a lot of trial and error in a lot of ways. I was like a guinea pig for a lot of things.”
On being a member of MENSA:
“So going back to the part about negative comments getting to be a little bit too much and why I don’t read them is because when I was working at AfterBuzz, and had transitioned into working on the Monday Night Raw after show, I would constantly get comments, Twitter, you know, responses, whatever that is, usually from men saying the worst things about how I was, they didn’t say like, ‘Oh, she’s unintelligent.’ It was, ‘Your dumb C-word’ or whatever that is and it really got to me. I was like, Okay, you can insult me for a variety of different things. You can even just say, like, hey, I don’t agree with your opinion, but don’t insult my intelligence, because I know I’m smart. So I took that a little too far and I went to take a MENSA test, and I got it.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Also, be sure to subscribe to “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” on your mobile device by clicking here if you have an iOS device or here on your Android device.
