'Returning to Impact has sparked resurgence in my wrestling career': Knockouts World Champion Mickie James
Not many are left from the golden generation of pro-wrestling, but at a time when up and coming women wrestlers are kicking down doors and breaking barriers, there is just no stopping Mickie James Aldis. Currently the Impact Knockout Champion and a former WWE and Divas Champion, Mickie is having the time of her life with Impact Wrestling during her third run with the promotion. She started off when female athletes were not 'wrestlers' per say, but when the opportunity provided, became a polarising figure in the mid-2000s who not only helped lift the women's wrestling division or put it on the map, but also change people's perception towards it.
Today, the women's division is at its peak across promotions with women main-eventing the company's biggest PPVs and Mickie has been an integral part of it. In a conversation with Hindustan Times, Mickie, who has done it all in the ring, and is venturing out towards projects outside off it, opens up on a range of topics including her career, future and the road ahead for pro-wrestling in general.
Excerpts…
You've had a great third return to Impact Wrestling, won the championship. You're almost closing in on a year with the promotion. How has the journey been so far?
It's been remarkable. It's been incredible and something that has been truly unexpected for my own career, just because I think I've been doing it so long and a lot of people expected me to kind of retire. I think that I've found this new position and role. Obviously when I first left, because I put a lot of my eggs in the basket… of really wanting this place for women's wrestling and to be able to have been given that platform with the NWA to present that All-Women's show. I think I've been on a roll ever since. Like when I first left, that was kind of the thing that I was the most passionate about - to present women's wrestling in a different way. And I was given that platform. I really didn't think about wrestling after that. To be able to come back to Impact Wrestling and do so many incredible things and have these matches that have kind of reminded myself and the fans of who Mickie James is and who hardcore country is. And it's just been a whole resurgence of the wrestling side of my career that I didn't anticipate. From that to taking the Knockouts world championship on WWE television at the Royal Rumble, which is something that I never would have anticipated. I never would've thought would have been possible. But it was ground-breaking… not just for women's wrestling, but for wrestling as a whole,
It is a possibility because anything is possible. So yeah, it's kind of crazy. And they always say that everything happens for a reason. This is one of those things like. Because if you go back like almost a year ago, I was in a very different place. I was in a place of uncertainty. I was in a place of self-doubt. I was in a place of, you know, what am I going to do next? Or do I need to start considering transitioning? Almost to the point where I thought that my in-ring as far as a performer, as far as a wrestler, wasn't as desired anymore if that could be said. Not that I wasn't any good, I've always known that I'm good at it. I put a lot of time and energy and focus into being very good at this, at this business, and not just in the ring, but in every capacity of it. And I'm still working on that. If anything, my last like five years have been more focused on learning more behind the scenes because I've been able to do so much in front of it. It's cool. I try to stay humble at the end of the day because I realized I'm very blessed to be sitting in where I'm sitting right now. Because for every one of me, there's a hundred a thousand that didn't make it, and I've seen it all at this point of my career.
You mentioned about having uncertainties. At this stage of you career, how difficult is it to prepare for a match as gruesome as let's say, the Texas Death match, as compared to your preparations 10-15 years ago?
Oh God. Well, I won't say that those matches hurt any less or more going into them. I just think that I have a lot more at stake now than I did then because I have a child and I have a home and I have a business to run. But most of it is like I need to stay healthy for my son, you know, and I need to stay healthy for all of these other things. I think that my body, because I've been wrestling for a lot longer than a lot of people, especially women, the recovery time is a little longer than it used to be. It's not the mentally prepping to go into the match. I just try not to think about how bad it's going to hurt after the match, especially when it comes to a Texas Death match or a Philadelphia Street Fight type of match because I love doing every type of these matches.
I think that because everyone has seen me as a wrestler, but not seen me since, I guess clockwork orange house of fun days, or even when I had that false count anywhere match with Melina. Like those people hadn't seen me in those hardcore matches, because if you go back to the beginning of my career, especially my first time with Impact Wrestling way back in like 2001, I was doing a lot of that same stuff. I was the first woman to ever be in a clockwork orange and house-to-fund match and the only woman for about 10 years, to do that. So, it's not something that I'm not capable of or aware or know how to do. It's just something that I worked so hard for so long for women's wrestling to be taken seriously and to be seen in the same light as men's wrestling that I really kind of steered away from it and really honed in on the wrestling part of it, of like being the absolute best wrestler that I could be always.
Tell us a little about the women's division in general across promotions, especially Impact? How much has it changed as compared to when you were here the last time around?
I would say the faces have changed, but then you go like, well there's myself, Madison Rayne is back there. You have Gail Kim – a legend, Hall of Famer leading the Knockouts division, which is so powerful to see. She's always done her part in always lifting up women's wrestling and to a respectable level. So as much as it's evolved, I think that is a true testament to our fans and to the expectations and the fact that we've had so many women, like Jazz, Jacqueline, Chyna, Lita, Trish, Molly Holly, Ivory… these women who have, in a time when it wasn't as cool, to break down those barriers.
Thank you to all of those women, my personal idols, Sensational Sherri, because she was the first one for me where I go, like, 'She's not looked at like a girl, she's not eye candy'. She's looked as one of the girls who goes out there and fights like she's respected by the boys. I could just see it. And I was like, that is, she was my idol. She's the epitome of what I wanted all women to be seen like… in that kind of capacity. Without them to lay the foundation, there wouldn't have been opportunities for myself or the women who are main eventing pay‑per‑views, who are doing Texas Death matches, and doing all of these things now that are normalized, that you don't think twice about it. When you hear that two female wrestler are headlining a card, you don't even think twice about it. Whereas 10 years ago you would have been like, you guys are insane? So, to see how far it's evolved and how far it's come is truly a testament to how hard the women have worked all the way up to this point to get here.
I would love to hear your take on kayfabe being no longer as protected as it once was. With the advent of the internet, social media, do you think the aura around wrestlers and gimmicks is diminishing a little?
Yeah. I still believe in kayfabe. I'm still very old school. I obviously am very modern and I keep up with the times and you have to find that kind of balance. But I also say, the art of the magic is not knowing how you do the trick. You don't go to a movie theatre and watch, a Marvel film and then go like, ‘Oh, well, you know, that superhero really is not that superhero’ or whatever. You don't sit there. You know, you allow yourself its escapism, right? If anything, you allow yourself to get lost in the stories and lost in the thing. So there's a little bit of that. When you nit-pick it apart, you take the magic out of it, right? Like you take what it's meant to be like. It's meant to be able to take you on a ride emotionally and kind of take you through the things and just kind of loosen yourself while you're at these shows. There's a disconnect because you spend too much time kind of being smart about it or just trying to over analyze it, that you lose the actual joy of it, the actual magic of the trick.
I'm still very much in the art of kayfabe. I think that there are certain things that obviously everyone knows or whatever, but then there's also a lot of things that you can still do. And the old story of good versus evil of good versus bad of overcoming adversity of triumphs, all these things, they still work. You don't have to overcomplicate them. And we don't have to overcomplicate them as performers. I always go with off emotion because emotion is what draws money. If you can make somebody feel something, they will remember that for the rest of their life. They won't remember that you did a triple moon salt to the floor. They might remember that for like a week maybe. They remember the story it took to get there. That's what they remember. That's what they connect with.
What is your take on this whole concept of breaking down the forbidden door in professional wrestling? At a time when there are three quality wrestling promotions, how much of a big deal is to have the opportunity to appear on other promotions and do a crossover sort of thing?
It's an amazing thing. Because I feel like it's a conversation that has just started to happen in the last couple of years. And we've obviously seen impact and WWE work together before when Ric Flair was inducted into the Hall of Fame and Christian Cage came over. You'd never really seen WWE do it on their programming, right? Like you've never seen that. And to me, they are still the pinnacle of success. They are still the market leader and they kind of are the standard bearer of like what's acceptable and what can happen in the world of wrestling to the larger public. To mainstream and for myself to be able to go back as the Impact Knockouts world champion, after everything and the whole kind of experience I'd been on the last year, I honestly thought I would never be seen back at WWE again. I thought it would be a long time.
It was kind of like this magical moment of forgiveness and understanding and mutual respect and of trust from both companies, on myself to represent myself as Mickie James, the legend, the five‑time WWE women's champion, the one‑time Divas champion, and now four-time Knockouts champion. To represent her in everything that she stands for and how much, you know, she's done in the world of wrestling, but also to make a place and make a way for the future. It took a lot of trust from a lot of people to make that moment happen. And I was just grateful that they trusted me enough, everybody to be able to do that and do it right. It's, it's one of those moments that I didn't anticipate and didn't expect. And if you would've told me that that was a possibility, then I would have said, 'you're insane'. But when, obviously it presented itself, I'm like, this is a chance to really make a monumental change, not just history, but the standard moving forward. For the fans, the possibilities are now endless, you know? That's exciting.
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