Former WWE star Mike Bennett (Kanellis) recently spoke to Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp about his Monday Night Raw angle with wife Maria Kanellis. The story was that Maria continued to badger Bennett for not being man enough to be a top contender in WWE, nor would he be a suitable father for their upcoming child. Bennett begins by explaining how Executive Director Paul Heyman helped pitched the story to creative.
So it’s actually funny how that all went down. It was the week we found out we were pregnant, was the week that Paul Heyman called us and said, ‘I have this idea of doing a tag match with you, telling Maria, you and Mike [vs.] Becky and Seth.’ He went over the whole match. He’s like, ‘and then this and then Maria you’ll come and you’ll be chickenshit and eventually she’ll get you in the hold and you’ll tap out but then you’ll start blaming your husband for you’ll start blaming Mike for it,’” Bennett began. “We had just found out like two days ago we were pregnant we were just waiting for the right time you know to tell them when we wanted to tell them. Maria was just like, ‘Paul I’ve known you a long time, I have to, I’m pregnant.’ He went, ‘alright. Well, this isn’t going to work then. Then, in typical Paul Heyman fashion stops dead in his tracks and he goes, ‘I think I have an idea. Do you mind if I tell the boss?’ Maria went, ‘no we were going to eventually anyways. He goes, ‘alright I’ll call you back.’ He called his back and pitched the whole angle that we did.
He does state that he doesn’t believe his treatment to be a burial, but he did push for some type of payoff to the story, which they did by having him become 24/7 champion.
We were like, ‘yeah, that’s great.’ The caveat was always as long as this goes somewhere. Like I said, if you give me anything, I’ll run with it but I want there to be a payoff,” he continued. “I don’t want there to be nothing just, you know, some sort of a payoff so when Maria finally leaves to go on maternity leave, I’m not just sitting there as the guy that berated for the last three months and then you can’t do anything with me because I’m a joke. Yeah. We had pitched a lot of the storylines. Then Paul came up with the 24 7 title idea and I thought that was fun. That was fun to me. I was like, ‘wow you’re really building something here. But, yeah. It was always that caveat of we’ll play and we’ll do it and we’ll have fun because again, it’s phony wrestling. Yes, it’s not real life. My name’s Mike Bennett and I’m not my wife’s bitch.
Check out the full interview below. (Transcribed by Fightful
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