Maria Menounos talks about wrestling at Summerslam, her TV show and on WWE Hall of Famers

Maria Menounos

Wrestling INC caught up with actress and Wresltemania 28 wrestler Maria Menounos. The star of Oxygen network’s reality TV show “Chasing Maria Menounos” talked about an invitation from WWE for wrestling at the SummerSlam which doesn’t seem to amuse her family.

Here is the full interview :

You’ve been a wrestling fan for a very long time. When did you first start watching wrestling?

I started watching when I was a kid with my dad. Growing up we were diehard wrestling fans, so it stuck with me my whole life. And then of course I met Kevin, my boyfriend, who you get to see on the show. He’s a big wrestling fan. So then we all were kind of just fans together.

Who were some of your favorite wrestlers growing up?

Oh, man. I mean, everyone. Obviously the normal favorites like Macho Man and Hulk Hogan, the Bushwackers and Ravishing Rick Rude. Jake the Snake, who I was just there watching him get inducted this year. The Ultimate Warrior, I loved so many. Bret Hart.

You inducted Bob Backlund into the Hall of Fame last year. Now, when you were 17 you produced a movie and he actually starred in that. Is that correct?

Yeah, he did. That’s how I met him.

How did that come about?

Well Kevin was always a big Bob Backlund fan, and he brought him to MTV when he was head writer for this show Singled Out. So he brought him there and they became friends. When he made his movie, he wrote a part in there for Bob. So that’s how it all went down, and I met him. Of course, I was obsessed with him and thought he was amazing. He’s a really really interesting and special guy.

And what was it like to induct him last year into the Hall of Fame?

It was really amazing. We’ve been friends for so many years now, like I said, since I was a teenager. And we helped him when he was running for congress. He came to my pageants back in the day when I was competing. We’ve been in each other’s lives for so long, and when he asked me I was so honored and flattered. It was really emotional. It was a really really big night.

You were also at the Hall of Fame this year and The Ultimate Warrior was inducted. What were some of your memories of the Warrior and did you get to meet him at the Hall of Fame?

I didn’t get to talk to him because by the time I finished the red carpet I was back in my seat watching the show. I was sitting behind his family actually, directly behind his family. And I was just watching them cry and be so emotional and just watching this very special night for him. Who would have known? It was an awful tragedy. I remember the night I found out I was, I think it was a Tuesday night, we had just watched our show with some friends, we were having some wine and I got a Tweet that I saw from Triple H that he had passed and I was in absolute shock. Unfortunately it was true.

You’ve wrestled several times in WWE, in 2009 when you guest hosted RAW, you wrestled later that night. Did you have any training at all before you wrestled that first match on RAW?

I hope, Raj, you thought I was good enough and it looked like I trained. [laughs] I had trained prior to it. They didn’t really believe me that I wanted to wrestle, I think. They figured oh, she’s a celebrity. She’s probably going to throw an elbow or something. And I trained really hard and it all kind of came together that night, which was so cool.

You’ve wrestled at WrestleMania, you’ve acted in movies, appeared in TV shows, and now you have a reality show. How did that reality show come about?

We’ve been asked for a long time to kind of get to it and do this and we’ve always said no. Eventually, the right kind of package came together and we had a good story to tell, or an interesting story to tell, and so we went forward with it. The fact that Kevin and I have been together for 16 years, we’re not married, we don’t have kids, my Greek immigrant parents live with us. They’re very traditional and hounding us for all of those traditional things. We live this kind of Hollywood fairy tale, but we’re not really Hollywood. There are a lot of different elements in there that were interesting not only to the network and the producers, but for us to share too. And this journey of when do you do all of these traditional things? How do you fit them in when you go wrestle at WrestleMania and do cool things? I feel like I am so blessed to be in this business and I want to get the most out of it. I want to experience everything I possibly can. I want to go to the moon. I want to do all of these things and I feel like… I struggle with when to settle down and do all that stuff.

And what else can fans expect from Tuesday’s episode?

I definitely get beat [in the match]. I spent two, almost two and a half weeks, definitely two weeks, at the chiropractor everyday after that to try and get my neck and back together. So it’s definitely an intense match. You’ll get to see a little bit of training. You’ll get to see a little bit of the resistance that I deal with when I want to go do this.

Do you have any plans to wrestle again?

Oh yeah. I don’t plan on retiring yet.