Maria Kanellis Bennett On The Legacy Of WWE Divas Era

Maria Kanellis has long been vocal about advocating for a better wrestling business for women, publicly doing so since the first interviews she gave after being released from her first WWE contract in 2010. She eventually parlayed that into being in charge — both on-screen and behind the scenes — of ROH's women's division at the end of the Sinclair Broadcast Group era, and later starting her own promotion, Women's Wrestling Army. 

Kanellis started in WWE at the height of the "Divas" era, where female stars were discouraged from having conventionally good wrestling matches, with more emphasis on bikini contests. On the latest "AEW Unrestricted" podcast, she shared her mixed feelings about that time.

"I'm thankful for it now, but I was pissed when they made me ditzy," she explained. "I fought against that from the time I was young." 

Her father had a "king of the castle" mentality when she was growing up, so she had long avoided being stereotyped like that. "So as soon as they were like, 'We're gonna have you be ditzy and dumb,' I was like, 'aaaaahhhh!' she added. 

"It was my worst nightmare at the time. I'm so grateful now, because of that, and being that kind of character I got to work with everybody, because they could play off of me. They could get their characters over because I was ditzy," said Kanellis.

Regardless, she consistently had a bigger picture of where she wanted the presentation of women in wrestling to go, with opportunities like more time for matches as well as merchandising, and media opportunities.

"I think of 'diva' as a very positive term in terms of wrestling," she continued. "Because if you think about who was considered a 'Diva,' it was Mickie James, Beth Phoenix, Michelle McCool, Kelly Kelly, Melina, Jillian Hall, the Bella Twins; all these people who are still making an impact in this industry were considered 'Divas.' So how can that be a bad word?" asked Kanellis.