The story of how Beth Phoenix vs. Awesome Kong once took place at WrestleMania at the request of Stephanie McMahon and how, allegedly, Michelle McCool and The Undertaker’s relationship with Vince McMahon played a role in stopping the match.
Women's wrestling before the rise of WWE NXT was much different world than the one we know today. In between the days of Trish Stratus vs Lita and Sasha Banks vs. Bayley, names like Michelle McCool, Beth Phoenix, and Mickie James upheld the integrity of the division during a time where the women were generally all lumped in together for one brief segment per show and no real fanfare going into any of their pay-per-view matchups.
In 2011, WWE signed Kia Stevens, best known as Awesome Kong and soon to be known in WWE as Kharma. Kharma’s WWE tenure was short but nearly included a major WrestleMania championship match that could have seen Kharma win the WWE Divas Championship and officially rechristen it the WWE Women's Championship. Speaking on his latest podcast, Freddie Prinze Jr. says Stephanie McMahon wanted him to formulate a storyline that would get Kharma in the ring with Beth Phoenix at WrestleMania.
“I got tasked by Stephanie McMahon to write a Divas story they they called it the Divas Title and the female wrestlers were Divas then, which I always thought was so stupid. So this was the story I was writing and she said ‘We’re signing Awesome Kong,’ which was this female wrestler named Kia Stevens,” Freddie recalls on the latest Wrestling With Freddie episode. "We had another wrestler named Beth Phoenix, Beth Phoenix actually wrestled in high school on the boys' team. She lifted weights, she is jacked, not like shredded, like a Bruce Lee kind of shredded, like a buff woman who could go in there and pick up anybody and smash them. So those two were the ones I was assigned to create a WrestleMania match for. Now, this wasn't a request from Vince, or from Kevin Dunn. This was a request from Stephanie McMahon, who was working on the women's division and making it mean something all the way back then with incredibly limited success, but you can look at where it is now, and she's had her thumbprint on each and every one of those steps to the top which is where I feel they're at right now.
So my WrestleMania card was going to be Awesome Kong, who they hadn't named Kharma yet, which was what they tried to debut her as before she left the company," Freddie continued. "It was Beth Phoenix as the babyface, and it was Awesome Kong as the heel. So how do you bring this woman in? Well, the way they brought her in or tried to, were these vignettes where you would just see this like Barbie doll and the head get ripped off, and the philosophy behind it was here comes this monster, who they were going to call ‘Kharma’, hate all the pretty girls and want to destroy all the pretty girls because Barbie doesn't represent what a real woman is. It's a fraud, and all these women have been deceived. They took pieces from my story when they actually did their vignettes. But I never had any of the Barbie doll stuff in there. This was more — Kia could talk. So I thought it would be good to allow her to tell her story. I like when heels tell their story more than when babyfaces do. I feel like babyfaces, someone else should tell their story. Otherwise, they're talking about how great they are. But a heel can give you their philosophy and you can hate them for it, or you can get behind in, and in this case, I thought we could get a little bit of both.
Freddie then talks about how Kharma was going to be pushed toward matches with Kelly Kelly, Natalya, and even Gail Kim, her old TNA Wrestling rival.
"So you have this woman who wants to destroy all these perfect Barbie dolls. These are the girls like the Kelly Kelly's that they had there, whose real name is Barbie, like her real name is Barbie, born Barbie. They called her Babs, I think, was her nickname. She's super cool. This was going to be like her first victim was Kelly Kelly. As she sort of started to come through and destroy all of the girls that weren't really going to compete for the championship, these could be squash matches for her, we'd be holding back the first challenge that she was really going to have, which was Natalya Neidhart, and she was going to give it a good go. But Nattie would eventually lose tour as well. This brings us to Gail Kim, who had a history with her in TNA and the company had also just signed. This was going to be the first test that our awesome Kong had and Gail would get some serious offense off, but eventually would fall. That's when Kong would call out for Michelle McCool, the Divas Champion, I want to say Women's Champion. That's what she would call her out and say, ‘I'm coming for that title. I'm writing the story up. All I've been told is, ‘Hey, write me this WrestleMania story. It’s not just for Kia and Beth, it's, you know, I want you to include all of our Divas in there. So that's kind of why you get the long backstory. So I write this up. I give it to Steph, and she really likes it, and Michael Hayes really likes it. It goes all the way to the top it goes to Vince and it's approved. But the WrestleMania match is not guaranteed. That's the goal.”
Upon explaining to Michelle McCool that she would be losing the belt by Royal Rumble, Michelle became emotional, not realizing that she would be losing the title ahead of WrestleMania. As a result, Freddie tried to pivot to booking a triple threat match between Phoenix, Kharma, and McCool. However, it was perhaps to late and the idea would be scrapped.
“I go into the Stanford office. I'm about an hour into my day. I'm trying to like sneak a promo off to Brian Kendrick, so he can kind of get a head start on it, and this guy, Ezekiel Jackson, they called him, his real name is Rycklon. Michael [Hayes] goes ‘Freddie, lemme talk to you.’ Go into his office. He says, ‘You've probably got some crazy fans, right?’ I say, ‘Yes. I've had my fair share. He goes, ‘Let me fucking show you something.’ He opens a drawer. He goes, ‘Look at this shit I got,’ and he holds up a picture and it's this big leg with a tattoo of him on the leg. I go, ‘What do you got?’ He goes, ‘That's me. I go ‘well, I know, but it's did you get that to that tattoo?’ He goes, Fuck no, that's just on some crazy fucker.’ I just started dying laughing right?
“So I'm disarmed now, and he crosses his arms and leans over the desk," Freddie continued. "The dude is a lifelong pro wrestler. He's not management, right? But he's trying to be a manager. After about six months, he and I were just cool. Like he would go, ‘Freddie, that sucked, or Freddie, That was good.’ It was just real shorthand with us at that point. But this was when he was still trying to be super professional being crossed his hands he goes Freddie There's a problem with your diva storyline, and we need to talk about it. I said what? What's the problem? He goes, ‘It's gone.’ I said, ‘What happened?’ He goes Well, Michelle said that you and her talked and she didn't really like the story, so it's gone.’ I said, ‘Was I supposed to ask her like all this?’ He goes, ‘Freddie. She talked to Undertaker, Undertaker talked to Vince, the story is gone.’”
When Kia did finally debut at Extreme Rules 2011, she took out Michelle McCool on McCool’s final night in WWE.
McCool recently spoke about dating Undertaker on The Wives of Wrestling podcast. Read more here.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a H/T and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
