Awesome Kong Opens Up About Why WWE Finally Signed Her
Awesome Kong's run in WWE may not have gone exactly to plan, but her getting signed by the company in 2010 was a long time coming and something that three Hall Of Famers helped to facilitate.
During an appearance on "Insight," the former TNA star revealed that Jim Ross, Steve Austin, and Mick Foley all "personally contacted Vince McMahon" in a bid to get the company to sign her after seeing what she was capable of. But that wasn't the only reason that WWE was interested in her, as the company was well aware of her in-ring work due to a different reason.
"Every girl who was sending in tapes of their best matches to WWE, I was on all these tapes, the matches with me," she said. "I never reached out to WWE, I never sent them a tape or anything. I had a plan of what I was going to do before I did that, you know what I mean? I didn't want to be premature. I had a plan, but they called me before the part of me calling them had been implemented in my plan, honey."
Throughout her time with TNA, Kong was able to put on some of the most iconic matches of all time against Gail Kim, and she believes that was "a spark to this inferno of women's wrestling" that fans are enjoying right now.
"It's just wrestling now, it's not even necessarily women's wrestling; they're just workers out there now, going out there and doing the deal," she said. "They used to be like the women were popcorn matches, they'd always put us in as second, the second match, so people could go to the bathroom or get their popcorn, hence popcorn match or whatever. And it's getting much more respect now and women are demanding more respect now."
Helping to improve how seriously women's wrestling is perceived is not the only area where Kong believes she has helped drive the business forward for females. Kong believes that because she stood up for herself behind the scenes, that is something that has helped women overall and left a legacy in her wake.
"I'd like to say I had a lot of influence on women advocating for themselves, because honey, in TNA, I would not keep my mouth shut," she said. "You would think, 'Girl, you just got in here, who are you to try to talk to the office like so?' But I just couldn't understand some of the things that were going on. I was like, 'That's backwards, honey, you can't tell me that when Kong and Gail pop on a screen and you're telling me that the numbers are spiking high — and those are the numbers that are highest all night — you can't tell me I'm not worth X amount of money on paper."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Insight" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.