Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview Ricochet recently did with Chris Van Vliet for his “INSIGHT” podcast.
On his WWE departure having nothing to do with Samantha Irvin’s: “No. She’s been talking about that for a while. Even before my stuff was up. I think it happened at WrestleMania (40). For her, announcing was only supposed to be the way into WWE. She, first and foremost, is a fan. She grew up with it. Her dad and brothers watched it. Of course, she’s a performer, so her time performing and traveling the world performing got her to a position to where Mark Henry found her and said, ‘This girl is amazing, we need her for something.”
On her early days as a ring announcer and how she wanted it to lead to more: “I think ring announcing was only supposed to be the way in. She wanted to be a character. That’s what she’s been her whole life. She’s been stage performing her whole life. Drama club, stage performing, traveling the world and doing stage performance. That’s what what she hoped. Once WrestleMania happened, she was like, ‘That’s the highest I’m going to get.’ She’s a performer. It’s hard to explain. When you’re just a performer announcing, she’s getting hate because she said she didn’t enjoy announcing. She enjoyed making the WWE Universe feel emotions and using her voice to help promote and move the company forward. This is just my example, it’s like having Mariah Carey, but she’s just a ring announcer. At the end of the day, she loves and respects the position and loves and respects wrestling, but she wanted to be like Paul Heyman, a manager or something. I feel like she broke tradition, and I think that’s why people are upset. How long was Fink [Howard Finkel] doing it? Lilian (Garcia), Justin Roberts. The fact that she only did it for four years and she found out, ‘this isn’t what I was born to do. This isn’t what I love to do.'”
