Beth Phoenix Discusses Having One More Match, Working With Rhea Ripley

– During a recent interview with Insight with Chris Van Vliet, WWE Hall of Famer Beth Phoenix discussed her career, her thoughts on getting into the ring again, working with Rhea Ripley, and more. Below are some highlights from Beth Phoenix provided to us by Insight:

Her thoughts on one more match: “I don’t know. It’s really hard to say you’re retired, when I left in 2012 that was the word I threw around a lot. I’m retired, I’m retired. Because I wanted to have a family and I knew for myself that wasn’t going to be in congruence to perform and to have kids, I needed to devote myself to the kids at that time. I give the age-old cliche answer that everybody hates, never say never. But it really just depends on the opportunities and what suits our family, that’s really it. We weigh out everything, Adam’s opportunities too. I remember when Percy Jackson came on the table, he was full-time in WWE, and it was really, really hard to take that on. But we weighed out everything, we sat as a family, and we made that decision. We’re like, this is huge, this is like the biggest acting opportunity that’s come our way and you need to go do this, this is massive. We talked about saying no to that. We talk about everything that comes our way as a family and does that serve us now? How does that affect the kids? How does it affect our marriage? That matters too.”

Beth Phoenix on receiving a con-chair-to from Rhea Ripley: “Again, they had never done that to a woman before. So we were like, are they gonna let us do this? It’s a violent, violent thing to see and it’s a violent thing to see a woman doing it to another woman. So there was just so much Shakespeare in that, in the ending of that match that it was just beautifully orchestrated, and everybody played their role perfectly. But there was something, there’s a couple of funny hitches. I was so nervous, I’m out of practice, and they’re all on their game, because they get so many reps, and they’re just doing wonderfully. Then my job was, of course, involving handcuffs, which anytime you have a prop, the handcuffs can go wrong in so many ways. They don’t latch or they break or the key goes missing. So getting the key from Rhea was a portion of this finish, and then I had to unchain Adam from the handcuffs because he was handcuffed to the ropes. Well, of course, I’m so nervous. I grabbed the handcuffs and I’m trying to open the wrong handcuff, the one that’s on the rope. And he’s just like, ‘What are you doing? Grab the other handcuff on my wrist. Free me, free me, free me.’ And I’m like ‘Oh, yeah, I’m so sorry.’ It was chaos, but in the end it was just so much fun. I remember coming to the back and we all just kind of were like reveling in the crowd reactions. The story we told is what we wanted to tell, that played out as beautifully and as perfectly as it could and it was really fun. It was great bad guy work, great good guy work.”

Beth Phoenix on competing in the Men’s Royal Rumble: “So that was a private conversation between myself and Dean Malenko. He pulled me aside and at that time he was putting together the Men’s Royal Rumble. And again, Chyna was a huge influence of mine. Glamazon was pretty much Chyna 2.0 and that’s what I was modeling it after. I felt like we needed a new, strong woman in the group. So, to be able to be the successor to her in that particular moment was just mind-blowing because it was very sentimental to me and special to me because of her. But also, it was this incredible gift that I kept so guarded because Dean had told me this about five or six weeks out. So I was given this secret and Dean said ‘Look, we pitch this, everybody likes it, it’s dependent on you keeping the secret.’ So if it had leaked before, they basically weren’t going to do it. I did not even tell my parents, I told no one, I did not tell Nattie and I tell Nattie everything. I was carrying around this golden goose. It was such a sigh of relief when I walked up to Gorilla and I got to, like, look around be like, okay, they know now when they were on number five or whatever and I was number six before they hit the music. But it was one of the most outstanding moments of my life to be able to be a part of that page in history, opening more doors for the women. And it was so much fun. It was so much fun. I’ve never experienced a crowd reaction like that.”

Her elimination of The Great Khali: “Oh yeah, they definitely set me up for success and put me in there with Khali. That moment of getting to stand toe to toe with him and be fearless, whereas inside I was just like, it was an out-of-body experience. That’s the only way I can ever describe that moment. It was just so intensely emotional that I felt like I was floating. It was a moment that I knew in wrestling it’s a fleeting part of the history book we have. We’re only there so long. It moves on fast, and the next generations that come bring so much more to the table than we did. But I knew in that little moment I was like no matter what, nobody can take this special, special moment for me. It’s what I wanted to do here, I wanted to have these moments, I wanted to be a successor from the stars that I looked up to, and to me in that moment, I did it. If it all ended the following day, I would have been okay with that.”

Beth Phoenix last wrestled at WWE Elimination Chamber 2023, teaming with her real-life husband Edge to beat The Judgment Day’s Finn Balor and Rhea Ripley.