Chelsea Green (@imchelseagreen) is a professional wrestler currently signed to WWE and is known for her time with TNA Wrestling, Ring Of Honor and Lucha Underground. She sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Tampa, FL to talk about her return to WWE, the signature introduction that ring announcer Samantha Irvin does for her, breaking the Women’s Royal Rumble record for shortest time in the match, her character being a Karen, her love for acting and stunts, why her husband Matt Cardona isn’t back in WWE yet and much more!
Quote I’m thinking about:
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.” – Oscar Wilde
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On having a green card:
“I’ve said this to you before, and I say to everyone, like the weight I felt lifted off me when I opened that piece of mail that said I was approved. Nobody except a Canadian in America, getting our green card will understand that feeling. Especially because a lot of people during the pandemic when I was released from WWE, they were like, Oh, you’re good. You’re married. You’re with Matt, whatever. Like, no, that’s not how it works, you don’t just get a green card. You don’t just magically get to work in this country because you are with somebody. So I was still struggling all the way up until I got rehired last year by WWE. I was still on my fourth visa. I was spending five grand at a time for these visas and trying to find someone to sponsor me to get the visa.”
On Matt Cardona:
“Oh my gosh. He’s doing amazing and I know that he always says I knew that this is what I had in me. I didn’t know because I didn’t care about him in wrestling when we got together. So for me to see the evolution of Zack to Matt has been insane. I just had no idea that he had that in him to totally change and evolve and, and become this entirely new persona.”
On Matt being released from WWE:
“But let me tell you a little story about that. Because when he first was released from WWE, and this, I get so angry with him, because guess the whole world is like, Oh, I’m Matt Cardona. He’s the only person to walk through the forbidden f*cking door and all he does all these amazing things. Let me tell you something. Okay. When he got released, you know what I told him to do? I said, I don’t think you should sign anywhere Matt, I think that you should contact every single company. I have all their information, I’ve been on the Indies for, seven years. And I think you should do all of them. And you should do them all sporadically. So that each week people don’t know where you’re going to be. It paints a picture of you are literally everywhere and you’re unstoppable. And guess what? He laughed at me. He laughed at me and he was like, No, I don’t think so. And he pursued one thing, and it was like, one thing. And then he ended up doing what I said to him a year later, and it and it’s amazing. That why he is the indie Wrestler of the Year or whatever, because he’s everywhere. So you’re welcome. [Did Matt give you credit?] No, he never does. So that’s why I’m giving myself credit. And like, we should clip that and then make him retweet it.”
On not winning:
“Sometimes I think that we’re all so caught up in winning. And I’m just not. I’ve been doing this 10 years. It’s not about winning. What’s it about? It’s about making people feel a certain way. And when I became the hot mess in Impact that’s when I realised, that’s when the light bulb like friggin flashed in my face, like oh wow, people don’t care. People don’t care that I was cool and winning. They don’t care that I won the championship. They care that I turn crazy, they care that I feel like their crazy best friend. I feel like their crazy ex-girlfriend. John Mayer sat in front of me at All In and said, Oh my God, you remind me of a lot of people I dated like that’s the feeling I want you to feel with a character. I don’t need you to go home and be like wow, she’s a real winner.”
On wrestlers developing characters:
“It doesn’t [get discussed]. But I don’t know that everyone does it. I think a lot of people are themselves just turned up a notch but that doesn’t resonate with me. Because, for me, I am just a very normal Canadian girl. Like I played sports. Yeah, I was really good at playing sports. But I also danced, and I acted I tried to do a little bit of everything. And I was a bartender, and you know, I struggled and failed with a lot of jobs, is that a character? That’s boring. You know what I mean? Like, good for Bianca, that she is The EST. She believes that. But at the end of the day, she also she truly is The EST. You know, she was the best track athlete, she was the best, whatever. I want to be something different. When I step into the ring, the minute I go through that curtain, and I hear my entrance music, I want to be someone totally different than myself. That’s just what I like, and what I like to watch, too. That’s why I loved watching Bray Wyatt. That type of human, to my core, I feel I’m like, Oh, God, I love that so much. I feel what you put into this. I know the development that you did to get here and the process you took to get there.”
On knowing a WWE return would be coming:
“I knew the minute that I got fired. I got the call. And I was like, Okay, sure bye. And I knew that from that moment on, it was going to be whatever I did, those next steps that I took were just to get back to WWE, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. So it was great going back to Impact and seeing all my old friends and working with my old co-workers, it was great. Going back onto the independent scene, doing that it was really cool being at NWA and opening up a new door I hadn’t explored and ROH. But those were the steps I was taking. So that at the right time, I could text Triple H and say I want my job back. And this is what I’ve done. So I just knew I needed to give it a couple of little wins, whatever that may be and character development, and people noticing that I had up my skills, whatever it was, and then I could text him and I could really have something to share with them. And when I did, he said okay.”
How do you write that text:
“Well, that’s the funny thing is that for so long before I got the job at WWE, I had spent from 2014 until then, so five years, like just agonising over these text messages, just sitting in front of my computer and in front of my phone and debating over and over. Should I write the sentence? Should I not delete, delete, delete? I can’t let me type this. Oh, no, that’s too desperate. No, that’s too cocky. No, I know I need to add more. By the time this thing all happens I had no f*cks to give. I just wanted my job back and at this point, I had already worked with Triple H and I knew that he is a just shoot it straight. Like just tell me what you want. Tell me what you need kinda guy. I didn’t want to waste his time. So I wasn’t going to be like, and these are all the amazing things I’ve done. This is how good I am. And this is why you should have me it was like, Hey, I see you are hiring people. I really want my job back and that’s the only thing I want. And then that was it. Well, I was at impact when it happened. I was just about to go wrestle and he called me And I didn’t pick up because I was about to go wrestle. And I’m like, and I looked at Deonna and like, she was my tape partner at the time, and we were holding the tag championships and I was like, Triple H just called me. Can you just give me one second? And then I promise you, I’ll be out there with you. And I went back, and I sat in my locker room and had the conversation with Triple H, and then I went out and wrestled.”
On the conversation with Triple H:
“He was really honest with me like, Hey, do you just want to come back and see where it goes? Or do you want to wait and do you want us to give you a storyline? And do you have any ideas? I said, I just want to come back. I don’t care what you do with me. Because at that point I didn’t. I just wanted stability and to be back. And I knew that if they gave me the opportunity that I felt I deserved in the first run. I could prove to them I didn’t know how and they they had no idea. And then I think that it was like well, I mean, we’ve got her she signed why don’t we just use her in the rumble and we’ll go from there?”
Why is Matt Cardona not back in WWE?
“I would also love to know that, I’m waiting. I am patiently waiting. Because not that I want to be partnered up with him in WWE. That would be great. I think we could have an amazing mixed match, tag team division, whatever it is. But I don’t know. I don’t know why, I would love to know why I would love to be a fly on the wall of kind of like the meetings of the top guys in WWE. But I do feel like in my heart of hearts, it’s only a matter of time, it feels crazy that he wouldn’t be.”
On being inspired by Kelly Kelly:
“She does because I have tweeted it about 30,000 times. She has no choice in the matter. She has to enjoy me. Because I love her so much. I tweet her all the time, my gear was inspired by her, all sorts of things.”
On hearing Samantha Irvin’s introduction for the first time:
“I loved it. I loved it because to me it adds a little something. We see over and over again, Men in wrestling, the fans latch on to something whether it’s Seth’s thing, Shinsuke’s thing, Roman’s thing, they have a punch line, a song a moment a movement, like they latch on to that with men. And it’s really hard as women to get men to latch on to that. For a woman it’s hard. It’s kind of a hard thing because I’m going shh, are they going to do that? Are they? I don’t know. Maybe not. But that announcement is what they latched on to. Yeah, I love that. Perfect. That’s what I want. I want people to have something that’s like oh Chelsea Green, that announcement, or whatever. It is just one more thing for them to enjoy.”
What is Chelsea Green grateful for:
“My green card, family and my relationship.”
