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Road Dogg Defends Maria Kanellis Over “BS” Reports

Maria Kanellis Mike Kanellis return at WWE Money in the Bank 2017

Contrary to popular belief, Maria Kanellis didn’t keep WWE in the dark about her plans to get pregnant after re-signing a deal, as Road Dogg has come to her defence over.

Maria Kanellis signed a new WWE contract and was pregnant within two weeks – which WWE knew about her plans for.

The former 24/7 Champion told WWE during contract negotiations that she and husband Mike were planning to welcome a second child into the world, with a direct line fed to her during this period being, “Vince [McMahon] loves kids“. Despite this, various media outlets criticised Maria for falling pregnant, having just signed a new contract.

Road Dogg, who was a WWE writer during that time and is now Senior Vice President, Live Events, has jumped to Kanellis’ defence on the latest Oh…You Didn’t Know? podcast, stating that WWE was understanding of Maria’s life circumstances during that time:

“I feel like that’s exaggerated BS like, look, did we hire them and she got pregnant? Yes. But that’s [life], their husband and wife. Like, what do you do, life happens. I mean, you see today, from a writer standpoint, holy crap, Becky [Lynch] gets pregnant. Holy crap, I can’t use Becky for nine months. Yeah, selfishly, I totally understand that line of thinking. Because Becky was a huge star, I was using her every week and now she’s not gonna be there.

But Maria and him [Mike] just came in. So really, it was. If anything, the timing was good, in my opinion. So I don’t know where that talk comes from.”

Maria and Mike Kanellis ultimately welcomed their second child, a son named Carver, to the world on 3 February 2020.

Both of the Kanellis’ were released from WWE in April 2020 as part of the mass “budget cuts”. They’ve since landed in IMPACT Wrestling, where Mike is currently half of the IMPACT World Tag Team Champions alongside Kingdom partner, Matt Taven.

If you use any quotes from this transcription, please credit Oh…You Didn’t Know? and link back to this article with a H/T to TJRWrestling.