Chelsea Green (aka Laurel Van Ness) is the latest guest on Women’s Pro Wrestling Weekly; you can read a few highlights and listen to the show below. WPW is also available for download on iTunes.
Chelsea On Whether She Goes Back To Train With Lance Storm:
At first, since I have been wrestling for about 4 years now. For the first couple of years, I would go back often, even if it was just for a day to help out another girl to help out in his class, or to brush up on a move that I wanted to learn. Now, because I am based in Orlando, Florida compared to being based out in Canada, I don’t have that opportunity as much. However, whenever I do have a chance to go back to Calgary, I go back and visit him because honestly, as many lessons as I have learned, travelling and meeting new people [to train with], Lance Storm knows everything. I swear to you, any question you can have about moves, psychology, gimmicks, the history of Pro Wrestling, he knows. Lance Storm is an encyclopedia of wrestling knowledge. He really drills the necessities into you so that when you go out there you won’t do stupid things. You just start from the basics, which is amazing.
Her Influences After Leaving Storm’s Wrestling Academy:
I would say, because people don’t know this about me, but I knew nothing about Pro Wrestling. Not a thing. I had never seen a Pro Wrestling ring until I was maybe around grade 11. Lance Storm taught me everything that I know. Then, when leaving ‘Storm’s Wrestling Academy,’ I would say that the person who taught me the most after leaving the school would be [Former WWE Intercontinental Champion] Billy Gunn because he influenced me on Tough Enough, and now I am really close with his family. He always gives me great advice. The other person would be [Former WWE Women’s Champion] Gail Kim because she helped me get the job from Impact Wrestling. She trusted and supported me, as well as elevated me along the way as I went.”
Lessons Learned Being In The Pro Wrestling Business At This Stage Of Her Career:
What happened was, I did Tough Enough, and when I got kicked off and didn’t get a contract, I thought—and this was naive of me, but I assumed that they would see how much that I loved this and how quickly I learned, and that no matter what even when I left I would be receiving a contract, so when I left Tough Enough and sat on my couch for about a month or two as I waited and waited and never received a call, I kind of had to think outside the box and had to think, okay, now what? I am now stuck in Canada. I am not legally allowed to work in the United States. I really don’t know what I am doing, and for the amount of time that I spent being on Tough Enough, I really wasn’t wrestling. I had to come up with something different. I asked myself: where are people going to generate a buzz to make a name for themselves? The two places I thought of were Mexico or Japan. I worked on trying to get to Mexico, which was the first thing that I really wanted to do, but a couple of my girlfriends thought that I should learn how to wrestle before I go to Mexico, so I should try out in Japan. That is how I kind of got over there in Japan. I still didn’t really know what I was doing, but with the language barrier over in Japan, they don’t know that you don’t know what you are doing, so every crazy move that I wanted to try, they were like, okay, let’s try it. That is how my confidence and movesets grew by trying things that I wouldn’t have tried had I been here in the United States.
Coming Up With The Laurel Van Ness Character:
I started on Impact Wrestling as just a typical mean girl, Regina George [character in Mean Girls movie] knockoff. I was bored with it. I feel like that is what every girl falls into when they are trying to be a heel girl character. I just find it overdone, and unless you can do it really well it becomes overdone. They kind of threw me a bone when they gave me a storyline with [Former Impact Wrestling Knockouts Champion] Allie and husband Braxton Sutter where I was able to get married. As we were planning this marriage segment and I am going to be left at the altar, I thought to myself, okay, how can I make this as dramatic as possible and make this as different and ridiculous. At this stage, nobody is talking about my character. Nobody is talking about a girl that is a typical blonde, mean girl that is on television. That is just not something people care about. When we got into doing the segment on television, I was the most dramatic human on the planet. I would stay crying. I would drink champagne. I would throw flowers around, and when I got into the back when the segment was done, Dutch [Mantell] was there saying, “oh my gosh, that was absolutely brilliant!”. “We need to film something, anything, where you are continuing on this mental breakdown.” That is what it looks like you are doing in the ring, you are having a mental breakdown. So, we sat down in the makeup room and I sat on the floor and he told me to smear my lipstick, and I said that it isn’t going to work because my lips are my skin color so it’s not going to work. He told me to put on red lipstick, but I told him that during the scene I didn’t have red lipstick on, he said to me to put it on and smear it. He then told me to wet my face a little so my makeup can be smeared. He said to act crazy and sing a song and do something crazy. I am sitting there with makeup smeared, sitting on the ground with no shoes on. Being an absolute nutcase. I am not joking, I didn’t think that it was ever going to be used, but all of it aired and it was one of the most-watched segments of that year. From there, we just carried on the craziness.
Chelsea On Her Boyfriend, Zack Ryder Helping Develop Her Laurel Van Ness Character:
I think the great thing is about my character is that talking with someone, someone always has some sort of suggestion because they can relate my character with a crazy ex-girlfriend, or a psycho mom or psycho sister, or a drunk-hot mess that they saw at the bar last week. You can relate it to whoever you want. With that comes these amazing suggestions from people. I get caught up in this character thinking that I have to go one way or another to the point that I believe that I need to be this drunk girl that never wrestles, but my boyfriend [Zack Ryder] takes a step back and says to me that I can take this character into whatever direction I want it to go. I should also stop making the character drunk, but instead, I should make her a psycho. You need a snapping point, and with that snapping point how would the crowd know that I snapped? He suggested having my lipstick slipped to me and that becomes my ‘thing.’ That is my weapon so the crowd knows that this is it, she is turning it up, and the match doesn’t become what it was before. Those little kind of pointers is where he helps me with. Where in the match I should make it happen and where it should happen, but I mean, really, there are fans that help me with this. There are fans that help me with certain suggestions where even I hadn’t thought of it and I end up using it.
Chelsea Talking About Dating Zack Ryder:
I mean, at first we based on our relationship on everything but work, and I think that is what helped us and how we fell in love because on our first date we didn’t talk about wrestling. Like I said, I don’t know wrestling. I don’t know the things he has done in the past. He tells me stories, but I am not sitting there thinking that I already knew that and that I was watching it on YouTube. I genuinely have no idea, but I love it and am interested in it. Of course, it is hard when we are on the road. Last week he was in Europe so we didn’t see each other for several weeks, but on the other hand, we are both doing the same thing and we are doing this together on the same team. I know what he is going through when he can’t call me and vice versa. I believe it is the best thing in the world to trust each other. I know when he is not texting me, I know he is busy at work and I am busy too, so it’s great. It’s hard. It’s a job, but that is kind of what every relationship is and you just try to make it work. This past week it was harder than usual because he wasn’t home all week while I am sitting at home Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thursday, but the minute the weekend hits I am off to the Indie shows, I am off doing business so it is totally fine. It definitely is tough when one person is really busy and the other is sitting at home, but we rarely have that, so we have been lucky.
Has WWE reached out to her regarding the second inaugural Mae Young Classic:
I have not been contacted yet. I don’t know if you know who Britt Baker and Santana Garrett are. We stay in contact and there are no secrets with us girls. We tell each other exactly what is happening. What conversations we have had with WWE, but none of us have heard anything. I know that a lot of girls, a lot of buzz about it, where they have heard from people in the Performance Center, but I have not heard anything about it. I am keeping myself really busy at the moment, and it is really full. That way, if they don’t call, I am not worried about it, and if they do call I would be totally excited, but either way, I’m happy because I am busy.
