Chelsea Green did not think the Unreal clip about her was unkind until others told her it was, and says the dedication she made to Michael Hayes at SummerSlam was for the audience rather than for herself.
Green spoke to Nikki Bella on the Nikki and Brie Show on Friday, hours before the SmackDown on which she broke her orbital bone.
She has spent the week being asked about it. Bella told her that people kept approaching her wanting to know what Green had said to Hayes.
“Isn’t that hilarious? That’s hilarious. And just know that, first of all, I’m not an emotional person at all. I also don’t hold grudges. In fact, I forget, and a lot of times my girlfriends have to remind me, like we don’t like that person. And I’m like, oh yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. I was momentarily, I forgot, and I was nice to them.”
Hayes had encouraged her that same day, she said. And when the clip first aired, it did not land as anything much.
“Back to Unreal, I watched it and I didn’t think anything of it. And then when I started getting flooded with texts, I changed my mind. Like, oh yeah, that was kind of mean.”
Bella suggested the reason she had not registered it was that she had heard versions of it for years.
“It was so ingrained in me. And they’re putting you in this box when you’ve constantly fought to get out.”
The decision to bring it up on the post-show was, by her own account, a piece of showmanship.
“And so when I went on the post-show, I was like, I have to do this, even though I don’t feel any type of way about it. I have to dedicate this win to him because I’m the petty queen that I am, and the fans need to see that.”
“Exactly, that’s what they wanted to hear, whether I cared about it or not. They needed the moment of me saying it.”
“And Michael Hayes is such a good sport.”
She expects it to follow him around.
“Poor Michael Hayes is never gonna live this down. It’s gonna be like me in the history book with a little picture of him beside it. My number one op, Michael Hayes.”
Green won the Interim WWE Women’s Championship in a five-way ladder match at SummerSlam on August 2. She broke her right orbital bone in a tag match on SmackDown five days later and has given no timetable for a return.
