Maria Kanellis-Bennett recently appeared as a guest on the Women’s Wrestling Talk podcast for an in-depth interview promoting her new promotion, Women’s Wrestling Army.
During the discussion, the women’s wrestling star spoke about wanting her new promotion to provide insurance coverage for talents, as well as her goal of attaining sponsorships.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where she touches on these topics with her thoughts. Also below is a video archive of the complete interview.
On her main goal for the Women’s Wrestling Army promotion being to provide talent with health insurance coverage: “I have a few. Health insurance. I would like to be able to provide health insurance, even if it’s very basic health insurance. I would like to provide health insurance. The second one is, and this one is probably a little longer than 5 years, but we’ll get there, I would really like everybody to make a million dollars a year. It’s just, that’s what I want. I want everyone’s paycheque to be a million dollars a year. Why? Because they’re worth it and because everyone should be able to pay for their family, pay for their bills. I just believe that wholeheartedly. You’re going out there and killing yourself, why not? A lot of actors in Hollywood are on weekly television shows and they’re making a million dollars per season, so you know what, I want to be able to provide that for wrestling too.”
On her other minor goals, such as attaining sponsorships: “Some of the more minor or smaller goals that I think are attainable within the next year or two is I want sponsorships that are beauty sponsorships and clothing sponsorships. All the things that wrestling hasn’t done in the past, I want to be able to accomplish those things, whether it be Fenty or Skims or Kylie’s makeup line. I want to be able to do those things within women’s wrestling because our values of being empowered strong women are the same values of those companies and so why can’t we do it? With that comes huge endorsement deals for all the women who are underneath the Women’s Wrestling Army brand. I don’t think it’s ever been done in the way that I think it’s possible, so those are some things that I would really like to accomplish. I’d also like to get us put on a major network or Netflix or a streaming that goes out to a much bigger audience. I love our deal with Pro Wrestling TV but I think we can expand it even more. I’d like to take our docu-series that we have going right now, combine it all together and take that to film festivals because I think the bigger story here is women’s empowerment and inclusion and diversity and being able to tell those stories in a major way at a film festival and getting the attention of an even bigger audience because so many times the wrestling audience is so small compared to what’s out there and having a documentary that tells a story about women and empowering women but also tells a greater story and that’s being in a male-dominated industry. So those are my immediate goals, except for a million dollars a year which might take some time but we’re going to get there. I think we can accomplish those things for sure.”
Watch the complete Women’s Wrestling Talk interview with Maria Kanellis-Bennett via the video embedded below courtesy of the official YouTube channel of the pro wrestling podcast.
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
