Mickie James joined Busted Open Radio recently to talk about her release from WWE and her most recent run with the company. Responding to co-host Tommy Dreamer, James described WWE as having the best talent in the world, which makes it all the more frustrating that WWE creative, in her words, can be so shortsighted.
“There is the best talent in the world there,” James said. “You look at the brands and there’s no one that produces the television that they do, because they have a monopoly on the market and everything. And there’s a reason why they’ve been able to do that. But it’s unfortunate when, creatively, you’re held back from your true potential. Whether it’s because there’s a certain vision for this one thing. Because a lot of people just become afterthoughts, and that’s a terrible thing. When you feel like you’re an afterthought, that’s a sucky feeling. And it’s not done on purpose, it’s just, like, it’s so single minded because they have this one vision for this one idea that they have to be on. That’s the one that’s the little golden egg at the moment, and then everything else just kind of works itself out.
“And I think that we, or me anyway, come from a perception of ‘where are we going here? Where’s the pay off, how far is it? That’s where we’re going to get there’ kind of thing. Three months from now, whatever that is. And I like to think backwards so each step is a bigger step in that direction. And I think a lot of times when television is being written short term, like there’s no long term perspective except for one or two storylines. When it’s so shortsighted, you end up cutting off your nose to spite your face sometimes. Because you’ll bury a talent two weeks ago, and then you’ll turn around and building them, or pushing them or they’re winning championships three weeks from there, out of nowhere. So it’s just kind of crazy sometimes. And maybe people just don’t watch wrestling that way. Maybe it is the wrestling fans that have changed. I don’t know, that’s kind of what I’m trying to understand. Then I started to feel like ‘okay maybe my long term vision or that kind of thing of building in those story aspects or moments and emotions, maybe that’s just not the way we work wrestling anymore.’ I don’t really know.”
James also talked about recovering from a torn ACL and approaching Vince to get back on TV. She believes that by going to Vince behind creative’s back may have helped make things awkward.
“I went to Vince and was kind of like ‘hey, I just want to you know that I’ve been just sitting at home, just chilling,’” James said. “‘I’m ready to come back whenever you guys want me to come back.’ I think that’s what had me come back for the whole Asuka thing right there. But then, I felt like because I went to Vince it all made it awkward cause I went around the creative.
“It’s just crazy, it’s politics, and I don’t want to get into all of that because I don’t want to expose too much. It’s like, good times and bad times. You have the best times of your life, you have some of your best friends there. And then also sometimes you get really disheartened, in that capacity. And it’s all stuff to do with things that are sometimes out of your control, and it’s very frustrating.”
