Recap of a previous Kong shoot interview:
She's really positive when reflecting back on the early days of TNA. She's glowing with praise for Dutch Mantell who she credits for being the first person to really teach her about psychology (and not just bumping for anyone given her size and stature) and Terry Taylor (who she says was always there to listen to her problems, and who she still speaks with now). She's also complementary of most of the girls, although she does say there were some catty issues at the very beginning, until they realised that they all needed to be pulling in the same direction to make the KO division work.
Talking about Gail she's complementary of the way that she put her body on the line to make their matches the most spectacular they could possibly be. She mentions how she is still very close friends with Angelina, and how they are always available for each other when they have a personal issue. She talked about also having a good relationship with Velvet (although they are not as close because Velvet doesn't live in Florida) and that they always shared a lot of inside jokes and love catching up. She praised Taylor for her energy in the ring, and Traci for not being afraid to take a top rope splash. She talked about how when she gets married she wants to be just like Sharmell, because she's the perfect lady, and "if she doesn't like you, then there's something wrong with you."
After all that is when things start to get a bit more interesting. When Tara is brought up, and she is asked for her thoughts on their Turning Point cage match, she replies with an absolutely hilarious "Well, she went over." line which makes it clear that she wasn't happy with losing to her.
When her tag team with Hamada is brought up she smiled, and changed the subject from their matches with Velvet and Madison to talk about the 1/4/10 match with Taylor and Sarita which she was very proud of and says was the best tag match that there's ever been in the KO division.
When asked about any problems she had with the writing, she talked about two specific things that she didn't like. She wasn't a fan of the Taylor Wilde storyline, because if the Knockouts were supposed to be the biggest and baddest female wrestlers, what sense did it make for someone to come out of the crowd and win? She spoke up about her belief that it would mean that people at home would be convinced that if a chick from the crowd could beat a Knockout then they would too [and she's right of course, part of the very essence of pro wrestling is protecting that larger than life aspect] but was told that they were sticking with it and that she should "stop thinking like a mark" - which she jokes she thought was hilarious seeing as those are the people who are watching the product.
The second issue was the cage match with Tara, which she justifies by saying that she didn't think she should lose because effectively they were putting over the WWE product over their own [oh what a surprise...she's right again!] She said that she went to Vince Russo and said that she had no problem losing to Tara, but she wanted to wait until the Diva aspect had rubbed off and that she had been in TNA for a while longer - but obviously again her complaint fell on deaf ears.
She talks about the Bubba incident and says that she couldn't stand him well before the Haiti stuff. She tells a story of how there was a young guy working in the office for TNA, and how Bubba created an incident on Hogan's debut Impact by bringing too many people to be in the audience. She says that the kid organised it to the best of his ability to make sure that no one felt put out, but that Bubba put the heat on the kid to the point where he was afraid that he would lose their job. Kong says that he was a bully right from the start, and she can't stand bullying. She also talked about how she had heard some of his radio show before he came to TNA and didn't like the fact that he used insider wrestling terms, because unless you've put your body on the line in the ring it's disrespectful to talk in that manner. She talked about how she rang up Devon to talk about how annoyed she was by Bubba (the Love Sponge) and that she was already on edge with TNA, and that if he did one more thing wrong "it was going to be on" [this part is hilarious, lmao]. She was reluctant to go into the details of their fight, but said that she hit him and that she had to be pulled off by Vince Russo. [you go girl!]
She expands on the other problems she was having with TNA at the time, talking about how she hated how they got rid of the six-sided ring, the overhauling of the set, and some of the talent that arrived alongside Hogan - and how there was all this money going towards things while the Knockouts were earning less than the makeup artists.
She talks about how disgraceful she thought it was that guys like AJ Styles, Chris Daniels and Samoa Joe were passed up when Hogan and Bischoff came in - those guys were the ones who built TNA from the ground up and carried the company on their backs so that a reputation could be made to bring those big stars in, but they never really got the benefits from it.
"It became apparent at TNA, that if you hadn't stepped inside Vince McMahon's ring, and worked for Vince McMahon, then you weren't shyt."
She doesn't go into details about exactly what happened when she left TNA (apparently we're going to have to buy her book!) but she mentions that she was considering retiring from wrestling altogether at this stage.
Less than a week later though, she received a call from Tommy Dreamer who said that WWE wanted to get in touch with her, which led to a call from Johnny Ace. She said that she was sick with laryngitis at the time, and was scared that he might think she was mocking him! There was issues though because she still had some ties contractually with TNA because they obviously didn't want her jumping straight to WWE, but these were eventually sorted out.
She talked about the pressure of being Triple H's first pet project. She was such a big fan of his when she was watching WWF before she got into the business that it was intimidating to be working so closely with him. She talked about how the McMahon-Helmsley era was one of her favourite storylines, and how that the Implant Buster is inspired/a tribute to the Pedigree. Over time though she became more comfortable with the situation, and was actually surprised at how much they valued her input into the direction of her character.
She talked about how they asked her to come up with a name, and she came up with a bunch of really terrible ones based on the idea that she thought they'd want something related to her body size - including Barssisa B. Wicked(?...lol) because it had the initials BBW, but when Triple H told her to say what she really wanted to be called, she came up with Kharma.
She called her debut "surreal" and mentioned how she struggled to stay in character because she was so overwhelmed by the reaction that she got from the crowd. The interviewer rather bizarrely jumps virtually straight through the WWE from this point, but she does say that the Royal Rumble was planned to be the start of a full time return, but that the reason it didn't work out that way "went back to the health issues".
She talked about returning to the indies and working in Shine, which has a great atmosphere backstage. She says that everyone there is putting in 110% to make it the best it can possibly be, and it's similar to TNA when she first arrived there in the sense that everyone is pulling in the same direction. She was nervous about her first match back and dealing with her back problems, but tagging with Jazz who she calls "one of the best technical women's wrestlers ever" made it easy.
When asked about who the indy girl is who has the X factor, she names Mia Yim - and says that she was looking forward to her match with her at Shimmer more than any match in a long time.
If she had to choose two matches to show her grandchildren in the future, she'd pick the Royal Rumble and her match with MsChif from Shimmer 9.
She says that right now her main priority is getting healthy again, and sorting out her problems with her back. But she says not to count her out, and that there are "tasks she needs to complete before you see the things that you've been asking me for" and that she's in the midst of doing them.
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