EXCLUSIVE: Mike Kanellis Talks Wife’s Name & Awesome Pitched Idea

EXCLUSIVE: Mike Kanellis Talks Wife’s Name & Awesome Pitched Idea

In an exclusive interview with WrestleTalk, former WWE star Mike Kanellis explained what it was like to get released, and also revealed if he requested to skip NXT when negotiating to join WWE in 2017.

However, that was not the only newsworthy thing to come from our exclusive interview with Mike. During the chat, the former ROH and TNA star talked about taking his wife’s name when he joined WWE and an awesome idea they pitched to creative.

During the chat, website editor Louis Dangoor somewhat surprisingly said that he didn’t mind taking his wife’s name when he joined WWE in 2017, stating that he thought it might be a good way to get heel heat:

“I understood it. When we talked about it with the writers I understood the idea of it and I thought it had a lot of good legs had we executed it properly. The problem was, we just debuted and then nothing happened. So, to me, as a lover of professional wrestling and heels getting good heat, when they said ‘we are thinking of you taking your wife’s last name’, I was like ‘oh that’s good heat’ because people will think I’m this big giant whipped whatever and they are going to hate the fact a man took his wife’s last name and they are going to hate that, because for some reason we think that’s the worst thing in this country. To me, I went complete worker and I thought I could get complete heel heat from this. It just didn’t work out that way because we didn’t push the envelope enough with it.”

Mike also revealed a pretty awesome idea that he and Maria pitched to WWE that may have made their gimmick work better on TV:

“We had actually pitched ideas and had this vision of what we could have made the Mike and Maria dynamic. I actually thought it would be this cool idea, which we pitched numerous times, where I’d be Maria’s husband, that’s who I am, backstage, that’s who I am, but the reason why I’m okay with that, is because Maria triggers something in me when I get in the ring that helps me win all the time. She brings out this evil sadistic side of me then I can go and go in the ring. We pitched it like maybe I’m in the ring and the guy is beating me up and beating me up and I roll to to the floor and Maria slaps me and I just get in there and absolutely lose my s** on this guy and turn into this f****** crazy person. That was always the idea, and I thought we could actually do it, with backstage vignettes and we’re walking to the ring and someone is standing there and they look at Maria the wrong way and she whispers something to me and then I just destroy the person…. She does something to me that makes me snap and I thought that would be such a cool way to be like we can show I can go in the ring.”

However, when asked if he would rather have debuted as Mike Bennett or Mike Kanellis knowing what he knows now, Mike had the following to say:

“I build such a name on Mike Bennett, I would probably ask to be Mike Bennett. That’s what I build my reputation on, that was my name. Then you don’t have that stigma of what the character was supposed to be, and I think that always stuck with me. My whole run at WWE was like: this is who you are, you are the husband of Maria Kanellis. I think that was a detriment to me. Especially when she went on maternity leave, then you kind of lose your identity if you are Mike Kanellis and your role is to be the husband of Maria Kanellis. As an individual, I would probably have liked to have been Mike Bennett.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvMQ4KRQNh8&feature=emb_title

You can watch the full interview above, or you can check out the key quotes by clicking here.

4 years ago by Wrestle Talk

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