Candice Michelle On The Special Clause She Had In Her WWE Contract
In an interview with Wrestling Inc, Candice Michelle spoke about a special clause she had in her WWE contract that allowed her to pursue outside ventures, like her deal with GoDaddy. Here are highlights:
On training herself to wrestle: “One of the biggest lessons I ever learned from Vince McMahon was, ‘I give you a platform.’ I remember sitting in this meeting with all the Superstars. He’s like, ‘I give you a platform. It’s up to you what you do with it,’ and I was hired as eye candy. We all know that. I came from Hollywood. Everybody there was saying they’re trying to pretty up the business, and in my eyes, I’m an athlete. I was going to college for basketball. I was a kickboxer. I did all this stuff, and I was acting. This is my dream job, not to mention I grew up on wrestling.
I was like, ‘How did this come full circle for me to actually have this audition,’ and when I got this contract, I knew that I was going to be the next Women’s Champion. They had no idea. They were like, ‘Put on some lingerie, do all the pillow fights and all that stuff,’ but what people didn’t see is I would show up to every house show two hours early. I would watch them put the ring up. I would get in the ring with them. I didn’t have the opportunity to go to wrestling school and learn wrestling moves. I had to learn everything on the road, and so the only way I thought that I could learn was if I show up early. And then people started to see that I was really putting in the work. I’d come home to LA. I rented this wrestling ring, cost me $3 a day. There’s broken down chicken coops over here, a weird barking dog over there and the owner says, ‘Just don’t bump in this area. You might fall through.’ I was like, ‘Okay. Alright. I got it.’ We got in that ring, and we hit the ropes over and over and over again. And then when I would show up, they’re like, ‘Wait, she’s improving a little, and then slowly, I remember Big Show getting in the ring with me one time and taking a bump. Umaga got in there to take the bump, and then it slowly progressed. And they started to see, okay, she’s serious about this, and then they started to put some energy into me. And then with GoDaddy launching, that gave me the notoriety to say, ‘Alright, let’s put her center stage.”
On her GoDaddy deal and her WWE contract: “So I had a clause in my contract which allowed me to do that. Because I was coming from Hollywood, I just had a different type of contract from the average wrestler who comes from the indie scene or comes from the wrestling school. My website was off-limits and certain things on there were off limits that they weren’t allowed to take away from me or have control over, and GoDaddy just happened to be one of those.”
On the reaction after her GoDaddy Super Bowl ad got pulled: “I definitely took heat coming into the business, but that was mostly because I didn’t come up in the indie scene, or the wrestling school or do the work that way. My work was coming up in Hollywood and doing it a different way, and that was kind of frowned on by other people. However, the work is the work. I remember this conversation. I mean, I didn’t know my GoDaddy commercial would be the biggest hit of the Super Bowl. I didn’t know they would take it down, and I woke up the next morning. I think I had 96 voicemails, and I was so worried. I thought somebody in my family died, and I started listening to them and it was just interview request after interview request. And I was like, ‘what happened?’ I didn’t even know what happened. Then I later find out they pulled it, and it was all the controversy over the commercial. And then I show up to RAW, and they’re like, ‘You gotta tell us about this stuff.’ And I’m like, ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know I’d be the headline of the Super Bowl.’ I was happy I got a national commercial, and so they kind of sat me down, let us know a little bit more, which obviously, I would have if I had a clue.”
