Maria Kanellis on Ring of Honor and Women's Wrestling

Maria Kanellis is known as “The First Lady of Ring of Honor” on television, as she and her husband Mike Bennett star weekly on the program on Destination America. The former WWE Diva opened up about ROH in a new interview with Channel Guide MagBlog. Below are some of the highlights.

She discussed wrestling on a Ring of Honor male-dominated roster:

“I’ve always had a lot more guy friends than girlfriends, so it has never intimidated me being in a locker room full of guys,” she said. “The Ring of Honor locker room is one of the best locker rooms I’ve ever been in. The guys are just so sweet and so wonderful. A lot of them came to my wedding. It’s great to be surrounded by all my big brothers and little brothers.”

She opened up about ROH maybe one day having a women’s wrestling division:

“Currently, we only have a one-hour show,” she said, “so it’s really difficult to highlight female wrestlers the way Ring of Honor would want to do it. Ring of Honor never does things half-speed. Whenever Ring of Honor decides to do something, it’s always going to be full-force. When we start that division, it will be when we can give adequate time to female wrestling because what we don’t want is to diminish how great these women truly are.”

Additionally, Kanellis gave her thoughts on the state of women’s wrestling today:

“I think we are going in the right direction,” Kanellis said. “We still have a long way to go. We have to be very careful right now, because we can’t become complacent that we are getting a few more nuggets of hope with time on television. It’s not enough. You look at women as a whole. Yes, there are more females that are going be on the cover of Fortune 500. You are going to see more females take bigger roles in these sitcoms and television shows. That doesn’t mean it is equal. Just because the girls get one main event every six months at NXT, that’s not equal. Yes, we are moving in the right direction. No, it’s not enough.”