As previously noted, 2018 WWE Hall Of Fame nominee Ivory sat down for a Skype chat session with WWE Hall Of Famer Steve Austin on The Steve Austin Show. Among many other things Ivory talked about her run as Miss Ivory of Right To Censor, the transition from terming female pro wrestlers ‘women’ to ‘divas’, and her WWE departure in 2005.
On the subject of Right To Censor, Ivory indicated that she did not receive very meaningful instruction from then-WWE writer Vince Russo. According to Ivory, Stephanie McMahon pitched her the RTC role, but was tentative about it. Additionally, Ivory said RTC was a lot of fun.
“Yeah, the only instruction Vince Russo ever gave me was, ‘just be a b—h,'” Ivory recalled. “They give you this name and I have no idea where it came from. And that was about the gist of my direction. ‘Just be a b—h, Ivory!’ ‘Okay, I’ll do my best!’ But, The Right to Censor, Stephanie [McMahon] approached me with it and she was really tentative about it, like, ‘nobody’s going to want to do this… would you want to join the group?’ And I said, ‘hell yeah!’ I was waiting for something to sink my teeth into, so I was all-in to be Miss Ivory of The RTC. It was great fun too!”
In Ivory’s learned opinion, the transition to divas made it harder and harder for her to talk put over the WWE product.
“I get that it’s packaging and it’s neat to put a name on what the girls are,” Ivory said. “But it seems to me that they were making us Sports Illustrated swimsuit models instead of women who wrestle on a pro wrestling program. So it worked for the company, but I think it was a big part of what made it okay for me when I left was that it was getting harder and harder to talk really great about our product because they had gotten rid of all the wrestlers, the women workers, and replaced that segment with pieces that were really just embarrassing to watch. Nothing against the women trying out to be divas, but watching them get canned in front of everybody on TV, with the audience voting them off with their cell phones and votes, like The Voice or any of those shows, but kind of not really based on expressing their talents. It was their looks only and we made them do these stupid relays and it was just really demeaning and it didn’t have anything to do with wrestling! Make a different reality show about that, but don’t put it on our show. So to me, it got to be hard to put it over when I was doing WWE Experience or whatever, anything.”
On the subject of her WWE departure, Ivory, who claimed that she did not get into landscaping, admitted that was disgruntled because she wanted to be a pro wrestler and WWE wanted her to be a talking head.
“I was disgruntled because there was still some good action to be had in the ring and I wanted to be in my boots and not be a talking head when I had the best gig in the world! I mean, come on!” Ivory elaborated, “it was such an easy gig, but I’m not very good at accepting great offers right away. I was still kind of pissed that I wasn’t in the ring.”
Check out the podcast here. If you use any of the quotes from this article, please credit The Steve Austin Show with an H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Source: The Steve Austin Show
