Filed to GERWECK.NET via wrestlingnews.co:
I wanted to pass along our new exclusive interview on “The Velvet Ropes with SoCal Val” with soon-to-be TNA Hall of Famer, Velvet Sky.
In the interview, she tells the incredible story of how Tommy Dreamer surprised The Beautiful People with the Hall of Fame news. She also reveals that a TNA official originally told her and Angelina Love that teaming up would be “career suicide,” the origin of the “Let the Pigeons Loose” catchphrase, their originally pitched team name, and much more.
On being surprised with the TNA Hall of Fame news by Tommy Dreamer: “I’m like, you work the worker. Workers never get worked, but we did. And it was like, such a wonderful surprise. He goes, ‘I had to tell you that you guys were doing some commercial shoot or some interview… just to get you to do the interview, to throw you off guard and not let you have any indication of this Hall of Fame induction.’ And I’m like, ‘Wow, you got me good.'”
On TNA initially rejecting The Beautiful People and being told the team would be “career suicide”: “We initially pitched our name as Velvet Love Entertainment… and they hated it. One of the officials, I’m not gonna say who… He’s like, ‘We can’t put you two together. That’ll be career suicide.’… I get especially coming from the person that it came from, I kind of get in a way why it was kind of shot down, because TNA was pretty much a male-dominated company.”
On the surprising origin of the “Let the Pigeons Loose” catchphrase: “Taz screaming, ‘let the pigeons loose.’ We didn’t even know what that meant at the time. I remember that was the thing from Happy Days… but we don’t really know other than that, like, where it would have came from. Taz literally just said it one day. And people were like, ‘Wait, what did he just say?’ We were like, ‘What the hell does that mean?’… It just caught on like wildfire.”
On their unplanned heel turn after being booed as babyfaces: “When TNA first put Angelina and I together as The Beautiful People, they sent us out there as babyfaces… their mentality was the crowd of mostly men, they want to see happy, hot girls in short skirts. We were like, ‘Yee,’ skipping to the ring. And they booed us. And we were like, ‘Ooh, okay.’ And the office was like, ‘Ooh, yeah, no. Babyfaces, no. Y’all are heels.’… Once they said, heal, we were like, ‘Don’t worry. We got it.'”