Maria Kanellis says AEW extended her contract by three months while she was still in the hospital recovering from surgery to remove a rare tumor, giving her time to recover before her deal ran out.
Kanellis discussed the end of her AEW run on Wrestling Life with Ben Veal, where she was inducted into the show’s Hall of Fame. Asked whether her contract expired while she was recovering, she described the sequence.
“So I had the tumor removed, and that was in October, and they extended my contract out for three months when I was still in the hospital. So I get a call while I’m in the hospital. They want to extend the contract. You know, thank you for the blessing of having, you know, three months of recovery to kind of get back on my feet after that. Luckily, Mike still had a contract at the time, and so, you know, I had three months to recover after my surgery, and I was still under contract.”
She described the tumor and its effects. “The type of tumor I had, pheochromocytoma, and it’s a one in a million tumor. They don’t usually find it until you’re dead. It changes your personality. It affects your heart. It makes your blood pressure do this. So you’re just angry all the time. And so I think a lot of me lost my fight for, you know, really fighting backstage for what I wanted, really kind of going after what I wanted. I gained weight through it because it also affects your hormones. So it was just a really dark time.”
Kanellis said the health problems arrived alongside changes to her role. She had been split from The Kingdom, Mike Bennett and Matt Taven, after 15 years working with them on and off, and was no longer involved with Ring of Honor’s women’s division.
“Then I find out like I have this tumor. I’m going through health problems…But I also think like I was just ready to do something else. I was to the point where it was like, okay, I’ve got a tumor and I might die from it, and I lost my Kingdom, and I am now doing some stuff with Ring of Honor, but it’s not a lot. And so I was also ready, I think, to be done.”
Asked whether the experience put wrestling in perspective, she said it did. “You realize what’s really important. I had a tremendous career, and so even though it didn’t end the way that I wanted, I still was given a lot through it. I met my husband through wrestling. I had both of my older children when I was with WWE.”
Ring of Honor and Tony Khan
Kanellis said Ring of Honor was the company that understood her best, because of her role helping run its women’s division before the company was sold to Tony Khan.
“I think that a little piece of me kind of died for the wrestling industry when that company was sold. For me, it was the perfect position. Of course I wasn’t making the most money I’ve ever made. I didn’t have the most celebrity or anything like that. But that’s not what it was about. It was about helping the next generation of women. It was about producing a product I could be proud of, and I was. And I love my partner Bobby Cruise so much, and we had such a good relationship in building this new brand of women’s wrestling and really starting to build some stars. And then it ended, and I cried. I couldn’t even mention it for almost a year without breaking down in tears.”
She said she got on a call with Khan before the sale closed to recommend ROH’s women for jobs. “I’m telling him who I think he should hire, and I’m telling him, hey, this person’s great for just the locker room in general. This one’s great in the ring. This is a good hand. This is a good star. Here’s she’s a good promo. And many of them ended up with jobs, which I’m so grateful for.”
She said a role helping ROH’s women’s division under AEW was discussed but “it doesn’t end up happening. Whatever happens, happens. I don’t like to dwell on it.”
Life after wrestling
Kanellis runs a florist business and has started event management work in her community. She said she is writing a book and has three children at home, the youngest eight months old. She has independent appearances scheduled, including a show with Rhino’s promotion this weekend, one in Tennessee, and WrestleCade over Thanksgiving weekend.
“It’s not very involved with wrestling at all, and that’s not saying that the door is shut, but I’m really enjoying what I’m doing now,” she said. “The way that I came out of wrestling was not exactly how I wanted it to be. It just kind of abruptly ended, and it took me a long time to move past that. I didn’t have a send-off, which is fine. It took me a while to accept it, but now I’m thankful for it because it gave me the opportunity to try other things.”
She also said the ditzy interviewer character WWE gave her in 2005 grew out of a practice promo for Paul Heyman, in which she sang “I’m a Little Teapot,” and that she was “angry about it for a long, long time” before coming to value it. She said she has since had thyroid surgery, which lowered her voice “quite a few notches” from her WWE days, and that she would like to see the Divas Championship brought back.
We wish Maria Kanellis continued good health.
