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TNA Impact Wrestling’s Gail Kim discusses differences in character development, TNA and the WWE

TJR Wrestling

TNA Impact Wrestling’s Gail Kim took some time to participate in an interview with me. The former WWE Women’s Champion and TNA Knockout champion revealed her thoughts on her early training, her rekindled passion for the sport and what the future holds for her. Check out excerpts of the interview below and the complete interview here:

Discussing her initial run in the WWE and how that differed from her later one.

Fans generally know about how I feel about the whole experience. I’ll put it down to this, it wasn’t the place for me. I think it’s a different work environment there. My first run, I was just green. I learned really quickly, I will say that. When you are thrown into that kind of environment, you have nowhere to go. I started at the top and won the title on my first night and there’s nowhere for me to go but down, really. Not necessarily, but pretty much, especially when you are at that level of experience.

It was a lot emotionally for me to handle. I definitely believed that first experience with them made me a stronger person and I didn’t realize how that experience could form who I was later on. I got released and then I lost my passion for wrestling almost completely and I wanted to leave the business and I did, on and off I may have done a few independent shows maybe 2 or 3 during that year off and then I started getting into stunt work and then TNA came in to the picture and people I knew there were people and being around the people that you start with and being passionate and one’s you’ve started on the indies with and why you’re so hungry for the business you get affected. I walked into that situation and oh my gosh, that passion just came flooding back and knowing that they were going to support women’s wrestling in the future it was very hard to pass by and it happened years later. This all happened for a reason and like I said I don’t regret anything being in both companies twice definitely gave me longevity in this business and it kept me fresh.

Discussing her initial run and the decision to be aligned with America’s Most Wanted

He (Scott D’Amore) said we want to build the women’s division and the only thing is we only have an hour of programming and realistically it won’t happen for a little while and he said we want to bring you in and we want you to manage and they wanted to give me a prominent role, this was Jeff Jarrett and America’s Most Wanted and I said oh, I’d love to do that and I did that for over a year and that was really fun. All the guys in that company were always so supportive of the women including women. Sometimes you may see back in the day women come down there and really do nothing and hope to be a part of and get camera time. They always included me and then eventually me just having a passion for the sport of wrestling was very hard for me to just stand on the outside and watch the guys do what I’ve loved and eventually I said, ‘you know guys’ you said that you wanted to have a women’s division and I’ve been waiting and you know I just can’t wait anymore so luckily Jeff (Jarrett) said can you work with Jackie Moore and I said yeah, absolutely.

I can work with whoever you want me to work with she’s absolutely amazing and the toughest women I’ve been in the ring with so we just had some amazing catfights as you would call them, physicality and people loved it and people were like oh, holy crap these girls are beating the crap out of each other and so just went slowly with Jackie and brought in Jamie D from the Independents and they would bring in girls slowly one at a time and then all of a sudden they said they wanted to bring in a title and bring in 10 girls and it was just a success overnight virtually and it just happened so perfectly I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Check out my new podcast with John Curry on TheMemNetwork tonight (Wednesday @ 8pm ET). Our interview this week, will be a pre-recorded interview with former TNA Knockout and current ROH wrestler ODB. Feel free to follow me on Twitter @TheMarcMadison as well.