Mickie James recently spoke with Aaron Oster of The Baltimore Sun. Here are some highlights.
What the TNA locker room was like before she left: It was cool. It was going through a lot of changes. It was going from just taping in Orlando to taking the big jump and doing the live tapings on the road. I thought maybe, monetarily, it was a risky venture, but at the same time, I thought it was great for the show. It brought a lot of energy to the show from the fans that don’t necessarily usually get live TV. When you watch WWE, that live audience from city to city really brings in that energy to the show. I felt like in Orlando, it was the same people coming to watch you week after week, or every two weeks, and it was really hard to get them to move on stuff. You shouldn’t have to overly work to impress them. You should have to go out there and be who you are and tell your story and do your job. And that should be entertaining to the people if you do it well. And I felt going on the road really did that. And they’re kind of mixing it up now. I felt the morale was great though. Companies are always evolving and always changing, and you have to adapt to those changes. I don’t try to let that kind of thing affect my job, and affect what I do every night.
Visiting the WWE Performance Center and if there is anything going on between her and WWE: I don’t really know … I mean, I know what sparked that interest in it was, me reaching out and seeing what opportunities were available, or any interest in me at all. And that’s when they talked about if I was interested in going down and working with the girls there, and feeling that whole trainer position out, and seeing if it was something that I was even good at. I’ve never trained anyone in my life. I’ve been fortunate enough to really work with amazing people and have incredible people lead me along the way. Any chance I had to work with Ricky Steamboat or Bobby Eaton, that’s what I did when I was trying to make it, was soak up knowledge from all those people before I went to developmental. I felt like developmental really was that fine-tuning experience with me. I can’t say that I’ve done all this stuff in wrestling, but at the same time, there is a bit of that humbleness that I feel like if I can give someone that knowledge, or pass something on that’s going to help them so perhaps they don’t make the same mistakes that you made, or it’s going to better them as a performer then you always want to give back. Someone told me a long time ago that you always want to leave the business better than you walked into it. This would be an opportunity to do that. Whether I’m in that right position right now, as far as being a trainer, I’m not sure. I have so much stuff going on right now between the music, and still wrestling, and other side projects I’m working on right now. And with that kind of job, I’d have to give up everything else, and I’m not sure if I’m in a place to do that right now. And obviously that could change tomorrow, but, who’s to say.
If WWE thought of the visit to see if she’s be a trainer rather than an active wrestler: Not necessarily, because we’ve talked about both sides of it. Initially, it was more of a feeling-out process, and they were talking about perhaps doing something in the future. I don’t really know where they stand on that, or if there’s interest in bringing me back to do more.
