Raw 25 included many surprise appearances of several women from WWE’s past including Terri Runnels. During her time with WWE, she was best known as Marlena but she hasn’t gone by that moniker in years.
Terri Runnels was a part of the big Raw 25 celebration and was one of the women from WWE’s history who came out to wave hello to the Barclays Center. However, when Runnels spoke about Raw 25 on her Cigars, Scars and Superstars podcast, she didn’t have the best things to say about the highest rated Raw in years.
“I was very disappointed [with Raw 25]. I really was,” Runnels said. “First of all, I was proud to be there and proud to be with my WWE family again; that was wonderful, but pretty much after that, it was kind of like, ‘Wow, really?’ I thought that [two locations] was a great idea because there’s no way that you can fit capacity crowd that would want to see it in that tiny Manhattan Center location. In order to have it at the Manhattan Center you would have to have it at some other place. I heard from friends that were at the Manhattan Center felt that they got jipped because they only had a few matches and it was dead in between.”
“I think I am disappointed. I don’t feel like I was disrespected, but I just think that they had; this is my guess, but I believe they had a monster of a show to try to do and figure out,” she said. “This many talents coming into Raw that is normally not there like past legends, and I just think it ended up being a time thing; ‘We don’t know what else to do, let’s just have them come out and wave.’ I don’t know, it was just disappointing because I loved my WWE family and all of that and it was just disappointing. It was a let down.”
Although Runnels said she felt let down by the big events, other women who came in for the show didn’t seem to be upset. However, it turns out the women from WWE’s past weren’t given the best dressing room conditions.
“Nobody was pissed off. It was a ball of fun in our dressing room, but I had to tell you, that was another interesting thing,” she said. “We were put in a basketball court; we were blocked off with black curtains, and there was another area where male legends were blocked off as well. Next to that, they were filming all day the APA vignettes so because of that the overhead lights couldn’t be on. We were trying to be ready in almost pitch black dark. They brought one little light and shun it over but it was still dark over there. We kept asking if we can please get lights and how much longer the vignettes were done and they’re like, ‘if we don’t get them done we have to get them done live so we may not be able to put the lights on at all.’ I couldn’t see to get in my suitcase; I couldn’t find stuff, it was dark. We did not have a mirror. I asked for a folding mirror; they actually gave me that, but there was no running water to wash our hands close by. That was very interesting.”
Quotes in this article thanks to Cigars, Scars and Superstars and Wrestling Inc for the transcription
