During this week’s “Monday Mailbag”, Mike Chioda described the infamous WWE Raw between Beth Phoenix and Candice Michelle that ended with Michelle getting badly hurt.
“I remember Beth was on her game. She was ready to have a great match. I believe it was a PPV,” Chioda began.
“Candace had been partying all week. She was partying heavily. She wasn’t a very experienced wrestler at the time as well.”
“I remember she got hurt,” Chioda said about Candice Michelle. “She almost got knocked woozy. She did get her bell rung. I remember something happened out of the corner and they were screaming at me. I remember the finish went down, something went down, and I told Beth to pull her out from underneath the bottom rope to cover her. I was so prone to finish matches even when someone was hurt.”
“Wrestlers wouldn’t even let you stop it if they were juicing and bleeding all over the place, cut really badly, broken arm, or whatever. It was basically when a wrestler got hurt, it was just get through the match, pin the guy, and get to the back. These days are a little bit different,” he continued.
“I remember Vince came back. She (Candice) was kind of out of it, and it wasn’t Beth’s fault. Beth Phoenix was on her game. It was just that I think Candice was winded or hung over or something. I shouldn’t have told her to pull her out and cover her to finish the match, but I didn’t stop it. When I came back, Vince let me have it. He gave me an a** ripping. He ripped into me. He was hot.”
“I remember him saying, ‘What the f*ck were you thinking?’” Chidoa continued with, “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so prone to getting these f*cking matches done and get them over with.’ In my career, I’ve never stopped a match on injury. Never. I think it was 20 years I was in the business at that point. I said, ‘We’re not prone to stop matches.’ We started working on that.”
“After that happened, I remember we started working on that when people are knocked out to just stop the match. It was my fault. I should have stopped it. The match wasn’t going so well at all. Beth Phoenix was always on her game. I just couldn’t wait for the match to be over with. Then Candice got hurt at the end and it made it even worse.”
Since then, WWE has taken steps to protect wrestlers when they get injured during a match. Whether it’s a cut, knockout, or injury, WWE has protocols in place for referees to stop matches if someone gets knocked out in the way Candice Michelle did.
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