Mickie James Reveals She Had To Fight For Stare-Down Moment With Trish Stratus

During an interview with GAW TV, Mickie James spoke about the stare-down she had with Trish Stratus in the women's Royal Rumble match.

“Listen, I will say that we were never even supposed to be in the ring together, so it was almost like we had to fight to even be in the ring. I was gonna get eliminated well before Trish ever came out and I was like, ‘I really feel like we’re missing a really special moment of us being in the ring together, having this moment’ and it was totally like kind of blasé as like, ‘I honestly don’t think people are gonna remember, okay’ and then it was like, ‘Okay, we’ll get you two in the ring together’ and so we got in the ring together but I’m like, ‘Okay, if we get in the ring together but there’s not — I’m just gonna bump and feed when she comes in?’

And there’s not this moment which I was like, ‘That’s the moment. I don’t need to bump and feed. Why don’t we just wait for this moment?’ You know how it goes. Get to that but I was like, I couldn’t believe — I couldn’t believe and then it made me think for a second, because we always wanna believe that what we’ve done has meant something to a group of fans, but I honestly felt like, ‘Okay, am I just being egotistic or delusional that I think that this moment is gonna be really special and that we’re not capitalizing?’ I get that you have to build other stories and make sure those stories get over, but I think that it’s like, why would you miss out on something that is so special with the fans in a match that is so special to the fans? As far as being the females’ first Royal Rumble.”

She continued.

“So it’s like, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. It was mind-blowing to me that we even had to fight so hard for it, but it’s also, we’ve been fighting this whole time in the business Lisa [Marie Varon]. We had to fight for everything and thank God for our Fit [Finlay] and for you [Mick Foley], people who advocated for female wrestling and really saw that women were more than just — I love women as eye candy too. I’ve always said those managerial roles and the girlfriend roles made the female wrestlers so special, but now — for a while that line got blurred and it just expected all the girls to know how to wrestle, or kind of wrestle good enough to have a decent, a good enough match and… so that kind of shift has changed but we don’t really have a lot of those girls that don’t wrestle anymore, except for strictly behind-the-camera type of thing.”