Chelsea Green says it is almost exactly four years since she texted Triple H asking for her job back, and that she won the Interim WWE Women’s Championship at SummerSlam thirteen years into a career WWE told her was over more than once.
Green won a five-way ladder match on night two in Minneapolis, going over Tiffany Stratton, Charlotte Flair, Jade Cargill and Lash Legend. The interim title was created because Rhea Ripley has been out since tearing her meniscus in June, with a unification match to follow once Ripley is cleared.
Speaking to Sam Roberts on WWE Now immediately afterward, Green was asked what was going through her head.
“I feel so jumbled with emotions because I mean, you know, I’ve been at this for 12, 13 years, and I have had so many ups and downs, so many freaking ups and downs. And every time I go to have an up, there’s such a terrible down. You know what I mean? Like we we we break the arm three times, we have heart surgery, break the ankle, whatever it is. Like you name it, I feel like I’ve been through it.”
“But the one thing that has stayed consistent for the 13 years has been the fans’ support. They have been behind me riding through all of the ups and downs, through all of the kind of darkness and the times when we were all like, ‘This is just never going to happen.’ And now they rode so hard for me that we had to have this moment.”
She went out of her way to praise the four women she beat.
“And we had to have it right now in Minneapolis with the ladder match, with a 14-time champion, the baddest bitch in wrestling, with Tiffany Stratton, who has been, I mean, quite possibly the greatest women’s wrestler to come out of the PC like for real, and Lash, who is, I mean, a WNBA star turned wrestler who could kill anybody with her bare hands, and I, what am I? What am I? I’m just, I’m just a girl who wanted to be a wrestler, and here we are.”
Stratton is from Minnesota, and Green said that weighed on her going in, along with the sense that the other four had stronger cases.
“But you know also I was dealing with that like the internal dialog was was so not positive, like it wasn’t negative. It was absolutely not negative because I don’t feel like I ever really have. I don’t. I don’t need to have negative self-talk. But it was like, this is Tiffany’s hometown, you know, or this is like Lash deserves this moment so much, and I know how strong she is. She could absolutely do this, or Jade and Charlotte, who we want to see them standing at the top of that ladder fighting. Like we want to watch that match.”
“So it was just all these things running through my head, and then there I was. I did the Undertaker. I rose from the dead, baby.”
Green was released by WWE in April 2021 and returned in the 2023 Royal Rumble. Asked about the moment on the ladder when she realized the title was within reach, she connected it to how she got back in the first place.
“Do you know that it’s been okay? We’re in 20. Let me get. Let me make sure I get this timing right. Okay, it’s been almost exactly, and I should go back in my text messages and see almost exactly four years since I texted Triple H and asked for my job back.”
“I mean, we do all have an ego. We were way too prideful, but not me. One thing about me, I will just ask.”
She said being told it was not going to happen was not a one-off.
“I’ve had that happen quite a few times in this company. It started happening in 2014. It happened again in what, 2015, after Tough Enough. And again when they told me that they didn’t want me to try out, and then they allowed me to, and again when they fired me.”
Asked how it felt to be proved right, she cut straight to it.
“It’s so satisfying. It’s so satisfying.”
Green also talked about the exhaustion of the day itself, from traveling to none of her friends being able to make the show to her gear not sitting right, and said none of it mattered once she was at the top of the ladder. She was clear that the title matters and equally clear about what she thinks the job is.
“This title matters. This is the pinnacle of everyone’s career. Winning this title and winning it on a premium live event or something huge like this, right? But besides that, we just want to have these amazing matches that go down in history that people talk about. We just want to make people in the crowd proud.”
On the point that she is no longer the underdog, she asked for a stay of execution.
“No, I don’t have any other identity yet. Jeez, oh my God. Can you give me like 10 minutes with the title before you say that? You don’t get it. You’re ripping away my whole identity.”
Green wrestled on the independents and in TNA before signing with WWE, and told Roberts she had worked in an Irish pub and dropped out of school twice before any of it.
“I am literally the person sitting in the crowd, except I’m not. Somehow, I ended up right here hugging Triple H, saying, ‘It’s been 13 years, and you gave me the belt.'”
