Cathy Kelley recently appeared as a guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the backstage interviewer spoke about her decision to leave WWE back in 2020, returning in 2022, as well as how she first got started with the company.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where she touches on these topics with her thoughts.
On how she got started in WWE: “It was actually through Ryan Katz. He was actually working very close with Dusty at the time and they were putting on this women’s tryout, which is essentially where I think JoJo got called up, Eva Marie, Lana, a couple other people, and I remember Ryan saying, ‘Hey, I think you should do this.’ I was scared sh*tless. I said, ‘No, I’m good. I want to work at WWE, but I don’t see myself being a superstar’, and that’s what the trial was for. So a few months later, I saw a couple of the girls from that tryout ended up being in backstage roles and I was really bummed that I didn’t capitalize on that opportunity. I think it was maybe a few months later. I was working with Sam Roberts at the time and he was very close to Michael Cole. So I kind of stayed in touch with Michael Cole. Then there was an opportunity to do live event hosting, which I tried out for. They brought a bunch of people to Orlando and we got to sit in on a NXT show. I think a couple people have tagged me back in the day from just sitting in the audience during that. I was told that I was going to be starting soon. They ended up having a hiring freeze a couple months later. So that got prolonged. They ended up hiring internally, but two years later, another opportunity opened up and that was in Stanford.”
On leaving WWE in 2020 before returning in 2022: “It was really tough. I struggled with it for probably about a year, and it was, you know, partially promises that were made when I started and trajectory of where I wanted to see my career go and it didn’t feel like that opportunity was going to come to fruition, which was, you know, being on one of the main shows, being on either RAW or SmackDown as a backstage interviewer. While I was doing that at NXT, they said that I wasn’t ever probably going to be on a main show, and that was my, my catalyst.”
Check out the complete interview via the YouTube player embedded below. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
