Chelsea Green explains everything behind her debut that was almost "victorious" in more ways than one.
On the road to WWE Survivor Series 2020, the SmackDown women's division was about to get a boost in the form of Chelsea Green, a Superstar from NXT that had been called up to the main roster but was sitting on the sidelines because the writing team was waiting for the proper time to debut her.
Finally, she made her debut in a Fatal 4-Way match against Tamina Snuka, Natalya, and Liv Morgan. Chelsea was originally supposed to win this match and, as first reported by Fightful Select, was to be named Victorious moving forward.
Now, speaking on the latest episode of her 50 Shades of Green podcast, Chelsea explains how she recently learned why she got in her first match back and how she learned she was going to be named Victorious.
“I got a call from SmackDown writers and everybody else on SmackDown to tell me I was debuting oh my gosh, guys, one of the best days of my life because if you know me, you know I have had 101 debuts. So this was going to be my final debut on the main roster. I was going to show everyone that I was destined to be a motherfucking superstar. So I get this call the night before around 11 pm on Thursday, debuting on Friday. On Thursday, I got a call and they tell me, ‘Tentatively, we have you debuting tomorrow. We have you in a potential four or five-way match to qualify for Survivor Series.’ Survivor Series is one of the main pay-per-views within WWE. So I was obviously very excited now. I already knew exactly what I was going to wear because the color of SmackDown is blue and the year prior, for WrestleMania, I had actually got made in case they called me in for a battle royal or some sort of match at WrestleMania, I had gotten made this beautiful gear that an Instagram follower designed for me with flames on it. Oh, it was amazing. My gear man, Rick from Global Wear Gear, made me this beautiful set with hundreds and hundreds of Swarovski crystals. Amazing. So glittery, so heavy. Oh, I loved it. So I knew right away that that was definitely the gear that I was going to debut in, it's blue, it's literally fire and the day of my debut was also the anniversary of Eddie Guerrero's death. So something I'm not a crazy wrestling fanatic. But I just thought that that was such a cool kind of ode to him would be the flames.”
She continued, "The next day I wake up and I'm on the treadmill, getting ready to, you know, sweat everything out and then head to SmackDown and I get a call from my writer and he said, 'We've narrowed it down. It's going to be a four-way match. You are in this match with three other women and you are going to be qualifying for Survivor Series.' I mean, obviously, that is an absolute dream, right? To not only debut on the main roster, but debut and win and not only debut on the main roster and win, but debut win and qualify for Survivor Series. So I'm automatically in my first pay-per-view. I mean, I guess not my first because I did the [Royal Rumble], but my first that's going to last longer than 14 seconds. Or so I thought. So I get this call. I'm so excited and as he is about to hang up, my writer tells me, ‘Oh, and your name is Victorious. I laughed. I didn't think he was serious. I didn't even really know what he said and he goes, ‘Yeah, your name is Victorious. Vince decided on it.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’
“So I'm on the treadmill like, ‘Wait a second. Did I hear that right? Victorious? Victorious, that's my new name?’ It took me five or 10 minutes. But I kind of fell in love with it. At first, I'm not gonna lie. I was a little iffy. I'm like, I'm Victorious. I don't really understand. kinda sounds like a 90s stripper. And then I'm like, you know what kind of love those 90s strippers vibes, right? Why wouldn't I? And I love a good pun. You know me, the hot mess loves a good pun, the amount of things that I could come up with that had to do with Victorious or the fact that I'm from Victoria, BC, Canada. I just thought it was perfect. So I had to work. I'm, I'm into it. I'm into Victorious. I get to work. I'm so excited. nervous. The whole day is kind of a blur. Because we have so many things we have to do, especially when we're debuting, you know, we want to get our entrances, right, our entrance music, right? We want to make sure that the entrance goes with the match. So in my case, my entrance has a lot of turning my back to my opponents. And that's just, in wrestling, not something you want to do when you've got a lot of people in the ring, so Johnny Ace helped me come up with my entrance and get that locked down. You know, we had to come up with our match. And I've never, I've never worked any of these people. I had worked Natty. But I had never wrestled Tamina or Liv, I had never even locked up with these people. Although we are professionals, and we learn to adjust when we're in the ring, for a debut, you really want to have chemistry with everyone that you're stepping in the ring with. That's really important to me. So we made sure that we got in the practice ring and rolled around. TJ was our agent who, I mean, he's just been getting so much love on the internet lately and he deserves it all; he's amazing. He's got such a creative mind and he really does help the women in such an incredible way.”
Continuing on, Chelsea explained the injury and how she had learned that her body was rejecting the metal plate that had previously been placed in her arm and that the injury could have happened anywhere but it just so happened to occur on live television.
“I am ready to show everybody what I can do. It was really unfortunate that I was gonna debut in front of no crowd, but I'm so glad that we had all the people on the computer screens, the ThunderDome is really amazing and once you're wrestling in it, you really can't tell that they're not there. There isn't. there truly isn't anything like having a live crowd but seeing everybody's faces and hearing crowd noise. It's a pretty amazing second. I don't know if you guys remember. But I did a Ladder Match in 2020 that was in front of absolutely nobody and that man like that is hard. You still have the adrenaline but you need a little you know, you need a little noise, you need some faces and things like that. So I get in the ring, you know, fast forward to, we start wrestling and I take Liv’s dropkick off the apron and I jumped down, I landed on my feet totally fine and I rolled back just like I normally would. Unfortunately, when I rolled back, as I had said earlier, my bones were not reacting well to the plate in my arm and we didn't know, none of us knew. You know, we had no idea that my bone was swelling and rejecting the plate.
“So when I rolled back and put my arm down, it could have been anything I could have done anything athletic, I could have broken this lifting a barbell at the gym. It just happened to be on live television during Smackdown during my debut, and there it went, it snapped. It was really rough. I obviously was in a lot of pain. But I was more annoyed. I think Tamina could even kind of vouch for that. I was sitting on the ground, holding my arm telling her, you know, ‘I broke my arm, I can't get back in this match. I broke my arm and I cannot get back in.’ I think she could just see the anger in my face. She was so good at calming me down and letting the referees know, trying to let the girls know in the ring, which was Natty and Liv that you know, I couldn't get back in and I felt so bad in that moment watching them in the ring. Knowing that I should be in there. Knowing that truly nobody knows what's going on except me and the doctor who was rushed to hold my arm. So, yeah, that was I was it was shitty, it was shittier definitely, you know, having it break on SmackDown, on my SmackDown debut, knowing where the storyline was going, which was to Survivor Series as opposed to when I broke it in NXT just knowing that that was my opportunity to show them what I could do. This time was a little bit shittier but I have to say I got right to the hospital. I got right into surgery, you know, they took care of me. This doctor that I have, he has really taken care of me and he's made sure that we've done so many follow-ups and that is how we caught the swelling in my bone this time.”
Chelsea explained in a recent interview with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp that she also had many different ideas for call-ups and moments where she was almost called up to the main roster. You can learn more about that at this link.
Unfortunately, Chelsea Green was released on Thursday, April 15, 2021, and now she is looking forward to the next chapter of her career.
If you use any of the above quotes, please make sure to credit Fightful for the transcription and link back to this article.
