Former WWE star Summer Rae was interviewed by Chris Van Vliet. She discussed her run with WWE, Natalya, Total Divas, why she loves watching AEW and the nixed storyline with Dolph Ziggler, Rusev and Lana.
Summer Rae on what she is currently doing:
“In 2020, maybe 2021, after the great pandemic, post-COVID PC, that’ll be in the history books, I had a mutual friend that got offered a position with America’s Best Racing and she couldn’t take it because it was a conflict of interest. So she goes, oh, I met this one girl in passing. Actually, it was Lisa Ann? Lisa Ann was a sweetheart. I met her at Sirius Radio years ago. We followed each other on Instagram and didn’t really chat much and she was so sweet. She teed me off this full-time gig. The first year we live-streamed every month. I went from COVID getting no checks and no money to actually getting paid monthly from this company and then they took me on the road and to be fair, I had no idea about horse racing or gambling, but, you know, Dusty Rhodes always would say about me, he’d be like, ‘Just put her in a room and she’ll figure it out’. I don’t know if it’s that I’m full of shit or what it is, but yeah, but now through osmosis and doing it weekly for three years, I know a lot about horse racing.”
Her thoughts on never winning the Diva’s Championship:
“Yeah, so I’ve never held a title. Every signing that I have, everyone likes to remind me of that. But it’s nice. It’s sweet. Like everyone’s like, ‘You were so underutilized and you didn’t get your flowers, and I wish you would have done that.’ The main thing that I always say to everyone and the fans that consistently say that to me is, I got my dream, There is a small percentage of women in this world that ever get to be a professional wrestler and say they wrestled on the grandest stage of all in WWE, multiple WrestleManias, and that was my dream growing up. That’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a WWE Diva and they were called Divas, and that’s what I looked up to. So I won the prize. Sure that would be cool to have, you know, a title shot but that didn’t make or break my career. Just being a part of such an amazing family and living out my passion, that’s a win for me.”
On the storyline involving Summer Rae, Dolph Ziggler, Rusev, and Lana:
“The Rusev, Lana, Dolph storyline was cool because it actually seems really organic like bringing in Dolph, you know, like having us do that. We all really enjoyed working with each other when it first started happening, me Single White Femaling her like pretending to be her and stuff like that was good. But yeah, when it definitely broke down, Lana got injured. I can’t remember on what and she was still learning how to wrestle at the time. Like she hadn’t wrestled much on the main roster so I was trying to teach her things as well as we’re going along.”
“When the TMZ storyline got mysteriously leaked to TMZ, no one cared. We aren’t Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, you know. That really set Vince off and like everyone, because, I don’t know why, but we were like the favorite storyline of him. It was crazy. I think at the time, Cena had a storyline for four months and we were going on three, so it just wasn’t something you were seeing like how they do nowadays, like amazing, long storylines. The storytelling in WWE right now is just really coming around so differently. It was interesting that we were getting crossover position, like great, you know, positions. So when I went there, he was really upset. I think the head writers at the time were really upset too because they had just been so invested in it. I think the fans aren’t dumb like to know that there was never a payoff, like we never had a payoff match. Lana and I never went back and forth. We never had the doubles match, so clearly something went wrong in the storyline.”
On the sudden conclusion to their storyline:
“So when the Rusev Lana storyline blew up in our faces, we were in Chicago. I lived in Chicago for seven years, big Bears fan, so people knew that. Usually I would get pretty solid reactions even if I was on Main Event or something. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s weird. I’m over.’”
“We found out that day. I think they called me into the office. I don’t even think it was Vince. I think the head writers called me and they were like, ‘Hey, it’s on TMZ. No one’s bigger than WWE.’ That’s a big thing for Vince and Cena would always talk about that, like, no one’s bigger than WWE and they don’t want you to think that either. So like, ‘Oh, you want to go to TMZ and say you guys are married, and that kind of ruins our storyline’, which in my opinion, I don’t think it did ruin it. It’s kayfabe. But, ‘You want to do that? Well, watch this. It’s over. You’re breaking up with him today. Do you want to write your own promo?’ I’m like, ‘What? They’re like, ‘Okay, great. We’re gonna put you together with a writer. You guys can go out and write it.’”
“I was pissed, like, I was so mad. I was like, God, we just did all this. There’s no payoff. Like, what do I do? I’m on the European tour with them. Like, now am I kicked off the European tour? That’s $15-20,000. Like, I’m just not going on tour. So the whole thing, I was like so mad.”
“Jimmy Jacobs and I sat in the United Center, in the arena. Jimmy Jacobs was like, not obviously new to wrestling, but I think he was like, newer at WWE. He was like, ‘Okay, we got to write this.’ I just sat there and I really told him everything. I love writing promos. I love it. Like, I want to write things for other people. I have this whole idea of watching Jungle Boy turn the other day, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna DM him and tell him this idea.’ Like, I have these ideas pouring out of me. So we wrote the promo and I think he went and got it approved. Right before, I was hot, like I was pissed and right before we went out, Rusev came up to me and he was like, ‘I don’t like this line. I don’t think we should do this line’ and I said, ‘Okay, well, I don’t like that this just happens, so this is what’s happening.’ I think it (the line) was about him not having balls or something like that. I don’t remember if I said that you’re a little bitch, but he said, ‘This doesn’t make sense.’”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Also, be sure to subscribe to “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” on your mobile device by clicking here if you have an iOS device or here on your Android device.
