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Awesome Kong on Her Influence Over Women Advocating for Themselves in Wrestling
Image Credit: WWE
– During a recent interview with former WWE, Impact, and AEW wrestler Awesome Kong spoke to Insight with Chris Van Vliet on signing with WWE and how Steve Austin, Jim Ross, and Mick Foley all personally contacted Vince McMahon about getting her signed with WWE. She also discussed trying to be a positive influence on women advocating for themselves in wrestling. Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):
Awesome Kong on how WWE became aware of her: “Every girl who was sending in tapes of their best matches to WWE, I was on all these tapes, the matches with me. 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.”
On how women’s wrestling has changed in recent years: “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. 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.”
Awesome Kong on her influence for women advocating for themselves: “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. 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.”
