Maria Kanellis Looks Back On Second WWE Run

Maria Kanellis, a former 2004 WWE Diva Search contestant, made her return to WWE, alongside her husband, Mike Bennett in 2017, after further establishing herself in professional wrestling in Ring of Honor, TNA, and more. Kanellis recently sat down on "Insight with Chris Van Vliet," where she spoke more about her whirlwind return to the company, which involved not just the 24/7 Championship, but two pregnancies, and storylines surrounding her second. Kanellis said the couple initially believed they were going to "WWE NXT" when they signed.

"Rumor has it, Vince got wind of that and was like, 'No, Maria's going straight to the main roster,'" she said. "I don't know if it was because I was already in WWE that he thought I just needed to go straight back to the main roster, I'm not sure. But, because of that, we ended up sitting for a long time."

The star spoke about how her husband felt about being "emasculated" in their storylines in the company. She explained Nigel McGuinness originally came up with calling Bennett, "Mike Kanellis," when they were in ROH, but WWE was the company that went with it. Kanellis said he was fine with it, because he thought there would be a payoff in the end.

"He thought he was going to be able to turn on me," she said. "I've always wanted to do the fight with him. Mike was fine with it, because he is the consummate professional. He is a fantastic worker, and he's like, 'That's what I'm doing.' He thought he was going to get a really good payoff for it, and unfortunately, it never happened."

The couple signed with WWE in June 2017, and Kanellis went on hiatus for her first pregnancy that September. She explained they tried to have a baby when they were in ROH and TNA, and she thought they weren't able to. She said it was difficult to tell WWE.

"It was this huge surprise and we were like, 'What are we going to do?'" she said. "Then Maryse and Miz made their announcement. We were like, 'Well, we can't tell them this week.' So, we had to wait... It was scary because we didn't know it was going to happen."

The pair would go on to sign new deals in 2019, and Kanellis said they explained they planned on having another baby, and if that wasn't alright with WWE, the company could let their contracts expire. They were told WWE wanted to re-sign them both, however. Kanellis said they had just found out she was pregnant again when Paul Heyman called them about a major storyline opportunity.

"He's like, 'So we're going to do this storyline with you and Seth [Rollins] and Becky [Lynch] and Mike,'" she explained. "'We want you to do a mixed tag match on Monday.' I went... 'Paul? I'm pregnant, I can't.' So that's how it got turned into a storyline. It was literally after us negotiating our contract, us re-signing, them knowing this was the plan, and then going to put us into this huge storyline."

Kanellis said that Lynch asked her if she was sure she wanted to announce her pregnancy on "Raw." The star would make the reveal mid-match, before Lynch could touch her.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Insight with Chris Van Vliet" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.