Back in 2007, Smackdown General Manager Teddy Long and former WWE diva Kristal Marshall were involved in a storyline that lasted for a significant amount of time. This led to an on-screen marriage, which culminated in Teddy Long having a kayfabe heart attack and being written off TV. The following week, Vince McMahon announced that Vickie would be taking over as General Manager of the company.
In an interview with Just Alyx, Kristal Marshall discussed both the storyline of the show and the backstage politics that she encountered while working for the company:
“It was fantastic! I think that was a tipping point in my career. Unfortunately, the storyline did not play out and that’s kind of one of my biggest regrets. Sometimes, when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, the recipe gets messed up right and communication gets broken down. That was a situation where there was a lot of miscommunication. Unfortunately, I think more often times than not, women tend to take the fall in those situations, especially someone as green as I was. Not to say that I did not take any responsibility for that. It was a lot on my plate. A lot too soon. I didn’t know how to handle it as well as I could have at the time.
Hindsight’s 2020. If I could go back 15 years, it would be totally different. I just think fans don’t understand that, for a lot of us, we were really young. I was 21 years old. I’d never been in a position like that before. I was still trying to learn the ins and outs of the business. So there’s a lot of growth and development that was happening. I was also playing this character, traveling on the road 365 a year, and trying to balance my personal life. That’s a lot for somebody that young and I wish things could have been different. I think that there was still so much that I could offer the business.
There was nothing that I wanted to change necessarily about the direction of the storyline. I just think that there was a miscommunication between myself and different writers. Things were said that I didn’t say and I was pegged as being difficult. So it was more of a situation like that. If I were in that situation now, instead of going back and playing telephone, I would have gone directly to the source and said, ‘hey look this is what I want to see, instead of playing tell-a-wrestler telephone one, you know? That is not the way to go about it. So yeah, I wish things were different, but I believe there’s a reason for the season and it worked out the way that it did.”
You can watch the complete interview below:
