This week on “Wrestling With Freddie,” Freddie Prinze Jr said that Stephanie McMahon wanted a WrestleMania 28 match between Awesome Kong and Beth Phoenix. Here is Prince describing how the plan for this got squashed.
“I got tasked by Stephanie McMahon to write a Divas story. They called it the Divas Title and the female wrestlers were Divas then, which I always thought was so stupid,” he said.
“So this was the story I was writing and she (Stephanie) said, ‘We’re signing Awesome Kong’, which was this female wrestler named Kia Stevens. We had another wrestler named Beth Phoenix. So those two were the ones I was assigned to create a WrestleMania match for. Now, this wasn’t a request from Vince, or from Kevin Dunn. This was a request from Stephanie McMahon, who was working on the women’s division and making it mean something all the way back then with incredibly limited success. You can look at where it is now and she’s had her thumbprint on each and every one of those steps to the top which is where I feel they’re at right now.”
“So my WrestleMania card was going to be Awesome Kong, who they hadn’t named Kharma yet, which was what they tried to debut her as before she left the company. It was Beth Phoenix as the babyface and Awesome Kong as the heel,” Prinze continued.
“So you have this woman who wants to destroy all these perfect Barbie dolls. The first victim was going to be Kelly Kelly. Nattie would eventually lose to her as well. This brings us to Gail Kim, who had a history with her in TNA and the company had also just signed. This was going to be the first test that Awesome Kong had and Gail would get some serious offense off, but eventually fall. That’s when Kong would call out for Michelle McCool, the Divas Champion. Michelle would lose the Divas title to Awesome Kong at the Royal Rumble.”
“So I write this up. I give it to Steph and she really likes it and Michael Hayes really likes it. It goes all the way to the top. It goes to Vince and it’s approved. But the WrestleMania match is not guaranteed. That’s the goal.”
(Some time later), “Michael Hayes tells me, ‘There’s a problem with your Diva storyline and we need to talk about it.’ I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘It’s gone.’ I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘Well, Michelle (McCool) said that you and her talked and she didn’t really like the story, so it’s gone. She talked to Undertaker. Undertaker talked to Vince. The story is gone.'”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit “Wrestling with Freddie” with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
