On Christmas Day 2019, Chelsea Green made her long-awaited WWE debut with an appearance on Monday Night RAW against Charlotte Flair. Months later, the Victoria, BC native would once again see her working with the Queen, teaming with Flair to take on Io Shirai and Rhea Ripley.
Teaming with one of WWE’s top stars right out the gate is quite the auspicious start to a career, and as part of our upcoming conversation for Love Wrestling, she and I chatted about her debut on RAW as well as the opportunities she got to work with a woman many consider the best in the business today.
I began by admitting that I was a bit surprised by her RAW debut. Unlike so many wrestlers prior, I commented, she hadn’t received weeks of vignettes or any of the traditional fanfare that usually comes with a main roster call-up.
“It’s funny because a lot of girls told me that that day when I was going out to have that match with Charlotte,” Green responded to me. “I was really excited! I didn’t care. I’m like, ‘I don’t care if this is my debut or not, I’m going to be on friggin’ RAW, and my family is going to get to see me, and all my friends and everyone that has seen me work so hard for six years, they’re going to see me on Monday Night freaking RAW! So, I don’t care what happened, but a lot of the girls did tell me like, ‘don’t worry, you know, this might seem like your debut, but actually, they’ll probably do this and then take you off TV and then repackage you,’ and stuff like that.
“So it has happened to a lot of people,” she said. “It’s just, we forget, right? In wrestling, we like to forget those things, and then we remember what we want to remember, which is the big, grand debuts and the storylines and things like that.”
After agreeing with her, I asked her about her experiences working both with and against Women’s Grand Slam Champion Charlotte Flair.
“I was a little bit nervous!” she admitted. “I don’t really get nervous about my opponents. I think with wrestling, it’s all hype, and if you believe the hype as a wrestler, it’s a little bit cringe-worthy. So I try to just go in, and everyone is equal because guess what, some of the least-hyped wrestlers are the best and vice versa. So I went in, and I tried not to think about who it was or who that name was. But, you know, I was nervous for my debut and everything.”
“It was really cool to look back on the moment and see the pictures and see that when Charlotte and I stood next to each other in the ring, we looked equal. I don’t know what it is about our statures, but we’re basically the same size. When you put us next to each other, it was kind of like chocolate and vanilla. It was the same thing! It was two tall, pretty built women that can put on a fight. I just loved the pictures that came from that. And then to then a couple of months down the road, be able to team with her was – it was really, really cool. It was also – it was something that will go on my resume and kind of my track record. I didn’t think about that like, ‘oh, okay, yeah, I guess I was briefly Charlotte’s tag partner!”
Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used.
