Gail Kim Says She’s Never Seen Any Signs Of What Tessa Blanchard Has Been Accused Of

In an interview with PWInsider, Gail Kim spoke about the accusations of racism and bullying against Tessa Blanchard that surfaced a couple of weeks ago. Kim said that she has never seen any signs of that during her time working with Blanchard. Here are highlights:

On if she has an interest in an in-ring return: “Hell no. Being a producer and agent really has fulfilled me where I don’t miss the ring. I was truly terrified. It’s terrifying for any athlete of performer to have to give up what they love. I was scared that I was going to miss it too much and overextend myself. But because of my role and because of this job, I haven’t missed it. I really haven’t it. More than anything, I always joke with the girls that I don’t have to wear gear anymore. Almost 20 years of wearing spandex, I’m done with it. I’m 42, it’s really hard to keep in spandex shape.”

On Tessa Blanchard winning the Impact World title: “It’s huge significance. In this whole women’s revolution that’s been going on for a few years now, people would wonder, what’s the next step? What’s going to happen the next? I think Impact is taking this chance. I know it’s very controversial and I know some people don’t like it, and even some people on the roster secretly tell me they may not like it, it’s everyone’s own personal opinion. I was pretty much old school. So at first, I kinda didn’t like it. But I’ve always been a believer in believability in wrestling. That was always my goal when I wrestled a match. I want everyone to believe in the match and get very hooked into the emotions and the physicality and the story of the match.

No one can doubt Tessa’s ability, and she does like believable. For me, the Chynas, Tessa, as long as it looks believable, I’m OK with that. I don’t know that I’d want it to be a full-time thing. It’s so 50-50 for me. I want women to be equal on the pay scale and treated equally, but then I like the whole factor of us being special and being unique. There are so many women now with the women’s revolution and inspiring the next generation and the next generation. With WWE, NXT, AEW and the countless places, more women are coming to fruition, I’m sure there are going to be just as talented women as there are men and we could see it changing.”

On the accusations against Blanchard: “I was traveling to Hard to Kill on Saturday night. I caught wind of it when I landed. It wasn’t even 24 hours when we got to the pay-per-view. Everyone saw it on social media and it blew up. It was pretty stressful in the sense I didn’t like the angst of all these women fighting, or I don’t know what the term is, but it weighed heavily on my heart in a way. Of course, women in general are catty by nature. We had that in our generation. I’m 42 years old, almost 43 and retired so I’m not in competition with anyone anymore and don’t really feel like. I think the women who have moved on and we’ve bonded and share that bond and we don’t remember all the cattiness if there was any.

When that happened, we went to a pay-per-view and it wasn’t even 24 hours. I went to speak to Tessa. Those details are private between her and I and are no one’s business. I based my decision of support at the pay-per-view and showing that support based on her time in the company. In the three years that she started with Impact wrestling, I’ve never seen any signs of any of that, of the undertones of bullying or racism. That’s where I made my decision of what I did and what I showed. Fans were going crazy on social media saying that I was a hypocrite. The difference is I had a chance to talk to her one-on-one. The difference is, in the WWE, which is where people were coming at me from and suggesting a hypocritical nature, is that I did talk to them at the end of my tenure there. I basically was brushed off and never tried to understand why I felt that way and never tried to make it better. That’s why I blasted them on social media because I don’t like to see that.

Any wrestler would tell you this, if someone was so crappy and such a terrible attitude and terrible person, do you think we would support that person? We would probably let that person bury themselves. She has the support of the locker room for a reason. Now, I wasn’t there at the incident. I don’t know who was there at the incident. I can’t make my decision based on hearsay. Yes, there were many women that came forward. … I had to believe and give a chance to the person who displayed the behavior that I saw working with her in that environment. For me, I felt like that should have been handled face to face. If people have problems with each other – that’s how we handled it and yes, social media wasn’t as prevalent. … we really did have meetings when we had problems with each other. In that regard, I wish people would be able to speak face to face and confront one another and talk it out. Unfortunately, that never happened. I know this whole situation has trickled into other people’s lives. I hope people can move forward and that the girls can all speak and resolve this issue at some point. I’m not them. I can’t make them do anything, can’t make them say anything.”