Former WWE Superstar and IMPACT Wrestling talent Al Snow was recently interviewed by The Roman Show at Coastal Championship Wrestling’s (CCW) recent “Breaking Chains” event. Snow discussed his time with WWE’s old developmental territory, Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW), and what it was like working with the female talents:
“When we were doing the developmental in OVW the women, which were Beth Phoenix, ODB, Katie Burchill and a lot of those women carried the show and were the main event. In fact, we had the first ever women’s ladder match in OVW in Louisville, Kentucky for WWE developmental between Beth Phoenix and Katie Burchill. They tore the house down. It was more than often than not that the women carried the show. The women can be as strong as an attraction if done in the right manner if treated respectfully.
“The most important, and this isn’t a sexist thing, if the women continue to be women – meaning they don’t become guys with boobs – that they can perform wrestle like a man, act professionally like a man, legitimately like a man, but maintain their feminine quality so they can relate to the men and women in the public.”
Snow was asked about former UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey signing with WWE, and said she’s going to need a lot more charisma in professional wrestling than she did in mixed martial arts (MMA):
“It takes a very special person to work the opposite. If she’s capable of taking the charisma she had in MMA, she’ll need ten times the charisma in the WWE. I trained mixed martial artists King Mo and Dan Severn. Both will tell you [like] King Mo, ‘I don’t know how these guys do it. I would rather much prepare for a fight than train pro wrestling because physically there’s much more demand’.”
The former WWE Hardcore Champion also has a new clothing brand out, Collar and Elbow. Here’s what he had to say about it:
“I wanted to create a brand for wrestling. At the time, I didn’t know there was one for wrestling. Ultimately the biggest fans of wrestling are wrestlers. You have to be such a fan of wrestling. There’s nothing wrong being a fan of wrestling. The problem is the general public if you wear a wrestling shirt and identify as a wrestling fan, they get the usual ‘you like that? That’s fake.’ They don’t want to wear it.”
