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Michelle McCool On Marrying The Undertaker, LayCool, Mickie James, Hall Of Fame
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Michelle McCool (@McCoolMichelleL) is a retired professional wrestler known for her time in WWE. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Austin, TX to discuss getting into the WWE by entering the Diva Search, being a part of the Divas Era and having to fight for airtime, the controversial "Piggy James" segments with Mickie James, forming a tag team with Layla and the broken Women's Championship, how she first met The Undertaker and started dating, her surprise entry in the 2023 Women's Royal Rumble, if she thinks a Hall of Fame induction will happen one day and more!
Quote I'm thinking about: "Every man has two lives, and the second starts when he realizes he has just one." - Confucius
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"I feel like I could, my mind tells me I can. Sometimes I'm like I can't believe it's been 20 years, which is crazy to say, but I am 44 now. But I do feel like I could, I mean, at least for a very short amount of time."
"Yeah, that was fun. That was interesting. I've told the story before. They called me on very short notice. I think it was eight, nine days. Asked me if I wanted to do it, and I was like, Oh shoot. I mean, yes, I'll work out. But I'm sure you've heard it a million times, ring shape is a whole different ball game. I think I was in for a few minutes. I think at one point, it's kind of in a corner with it was either Piper or Naomi. I was like give me a second y'all, I'm tired. But, yeah, that was super fun. I knew I was going to be there with the kids watching, and my dad was there, and it was something different. I mean, they said I could wrestle in my sweatpants and Uggs. I should have been doing it my entire career. I was like I am in. Honestly, it was a thing where Mark and I talked, our daughter was kind of struggling, she's a perfectionist, and if she can't do something on the first try, she gets so mad. So it was a kind of a lesson. I said, You know what? I'm just gonna let her know this is something that mommy is kind of a little bit terrified to do on such short notice. I don't know if I'm ready to do it, but you know what, we can be scared and brave at the same time and go out and do it. So it was kind of a lesson I was trying to build in for her. Don't really know that she got that, she's just loves WWE period. Not even sure she was cheering for me. But that was part of the reasoning as well."
"She has been obsessed as long as I can remember. I mean, she was probably three or four watching something. Even Mark turned to me. He's like, Oh no, she gets it. She asked this question, like, why would they do that? Or this doesn't make sense or wow, that looked really good. And we're like, oh gosh, she gets it. She loves it."
"Oh my gosh, they're awful. I joke that I'm married and so I could wear whatever heels I wanted to, and occasional security jumps at the airport. People recognizing we were traveling on the road all the time. But man, it's crazy. People just don't have boundaries. It's like, you appreciate and love the fans. You hear it from even the superstars today, but when you're getting chased or followed and your kids are around, especially, it's just like, Dude, come on."
"Not until honest to goodness I got the call for the Diva Search, because I come from such a small town in Florida, and it's kind of one of those deals where nobody ever leaves. There have been some great athletes that have come out of that town, but everybody just kind of comes back, and you just always think that's just what you do. So I never really thought, hey, this is what I'm going to do. But in 2004 when they had the Diva Search, I was watching it, and a friend said, there's your chance, but you won't do it. I was like, Oh, I hate being told that I won't or I can't. Also hate failing. So I'm not going to tell you I'm trying, but I did. I filled out the papers. I went to this local park, had a friend take pictures, didn't tell him what for, sent them in and I got a call. I was too nervous to answer it at the time, I was actually with my parents, so I just sent it the voicemail. Got the voicemail that they were asking me to come. And I was like this can't be true. So called him back and went to New York, this huge cattle call, and everybody had these portfolios that their agents are sent. I'm like, Oh my gosh. I don't even know what fake eyelashes are. I have these pictures I took in the park, where am I right now?"
"I still was like not that it wouldn't or couldn't, because I trusted in my abilities, but it just seemed too far-fetched. It just seemed like, oh, here it is. This is fun. But especially after I got cut, I didn't think I was gonna get called back to go train at Deep South. So while it was within reach, I don't know that I ever thought, can this really happen to me? Little me from Palatka, Florida, this teeny, tiny town nobody's heard of. But here we are."
"Well, it took a while. I think if you watched the first several years of my career, I wasn't super comfortable speaking on the microphone or doing promos. But once I realized you've got nothing [to lose], I mean, you have everything to lose, yes, but the more comfortable you can go out there and just act as if nobody's there, it becomes a lot easier. And when Layla and I got paired together game over, we just had fun."
"That was the hard part during my era. When you hear about the Attitude Era, you hear about the Divas era, which we were kind of like a forgotten era. We were kind of like the in between, which for a while I was frustrated with that, but then I was like, there's nothing we did all we could with what we had, and I'm grateful for that, but it was hard to tell a story. They started giving Layla and I more and more time, which was nice, more and more freedom, which was nice, also led to a lot of other people not liking that, because that's the wrestling business, which made that difficult as well, because you have to have somebody to work. But it was hard. It was a struggle."
"I was proud of that Tables match. It was not only the first, it was fun. Earlier in the day we were walking up the ramp, and I remember somebody saying you know, the table is fine, it's gonna break. There's two of them, right? There's Layla and Michelle, yeah, no problem. That sucker did not break. Table would not put us over. They didn't like us either. So we hit and I'm like, oh gosh. Now look back up, Natty, climb back up. And it couldn't have turned off better with her going back up for the second time. But yeah, that was a big moment."
"There was one point where Victoria and I had a match. We came backstage, getting changed, and they came back and said, Hey, y'all need to come back out and do your match again. We're like, What do you mean come back out and do our match again? They're like, your punches and kicks look better than the guys. We're like, Wait a minute. We have to go redo our match because our punches look too good? That doesn't sound like an us problem. Chris Jericho at the time, he stood up for us, and he said if the guy's punches don't look as good, that is not the girl's fault. That's not their fault. Regardless, we had to go out there and re-do our match, and there was a period of about three or four weeks that girls couldn't punch or kick."
"I give credit to this day, and I said this to somebody the other day, and I said it to her. But the whole Piggy James storyline, me at heart hated it, just because of what it was. You're bullying somebody, supposedly that they're supposedly overweight, and that has never been me. Every week I'd go up to her, 'Mickie, I'm so sorry. This is what they want us to say'. Complete professional. Not once did she try to change things, which often girls did. Not once. She's like, 'No, it's good. It's cool.' She knew that took two to tango. She knew what her role was. She knew what our role was, and she really, I think, put us on the map with that storyline."
"That was, I want to say that was Batista's idea. We were backstage, and he's like, Well, what If y'all cut it in half like the best friend necklaces? Our minds went there, and we're like, that'd be great. And I don't think anybody else thought it was a great idea. Like, come on, guys, that was fun. Yeah, that was fun."
"I don't think I told anybody other than Mark and Layla. She knew it was coming. I wanted to enjoy it. It was hard because we were still fighting for that last match, or that last build-up to the last match, and it just, I don't know if I ever got true closure, because it's like I didn't really want to leave, but I didn't want to hate something I loved my entire life and still love to this day. So it was a tough decision, but I had to just try to find the good. Always try to find the good. I have some very dear friends to this day that I take from the business."
"I just know that I wasn't the only one dating guys around there and I definitely didn't see that from anybody else. [Did it feel personal?] Not so much personal to me, but because he is the top [guy], he is the benchmark for everybody. So I think people looked at that differently, he has whatever pull he wants is what people think. You can ask him, and I actually am so stubborn, I don't ever need any type of help to fight any battle, to fight a storyline, to pitch a storyline, I can look in the mirror and just say that's never happened. Now, there was one time a little incident happened with a guy, and I had to beg him not to say something, even though this guy was calling Mark and wanting to talk to him and apologize and everything else, which he didn't answer. He may sweat it out for several weeks, it's good now. I was good, totally fine now, but I mean, just point being that's my nature, that's my character, that's how I've always been my entire life to a fault. I don't need help from anybody. I can figure this out. I can chuck them through and get something done. But, you know, there were writers that literally threw up their papers. ‘If she wasn't the Undertaker's girlfriend…’ I will turn my cheek a million times, but also stand up for myself. And there are a few times I can remember, like a handful, where I'd already talked to somebody earlier in the day and they had treated me one way. And then, of course, they see me and Mark together, and I have to say, Guess what? I didn't change from 10 minutes ago. So treat me the same way you treated me when he wasn't standing here."
"I don't know. I get that question all the time. I mean, it would be an honor. I don't know, not my call. Don't even whose call it is, but I have no idea. I would hope Laycool would go in, and everybody always asks. I mean, that would be an honor to go in as Michelle McCool, obviously. But think Laycool is what put Michelle McCool really on the map. And I'll never take that for granted, but she just disassociated from wrestling for quite some time, and I respected that. Would I give anything to have a LayCool reunion at a Rumble? Yeah."
"I did. I think he told me early in the afternoon, when they made that decision I was hot. Why? That doesn’t make sense! And of course, he's like his business. That's his call. I knew that it had been pitched that Edge break the streak years prior. But Adam said No, there's no rhyme or reason that I need to break The Streak, that The Streak needs to be broken, that I want to have any part of that. And he didn't mad respect, but, yeah, not a good night."
"My health, for family and for nature."
