Former WWE Superstars Lita, Christy Hemme and Gail Kim are the guests this week on “Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia.” You can listen/watch the podcast by visiting www.ChasingGlory.com or by clicking on the video below.

Thanks to “Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia” for the following transcription:

Kayfabe : Part 1: The Secret Is Out, Amy “Lita” Dumas, Christy Hemme and Gail Kim Tell All

Who Christy called after the backlash on releasing the “Kayfabe” trailer

Christy Hemme called Lilian Garcia for her advice after wrestling industry backlash from posting the Kayfabe trailer on social media. “At first, I didn’t want to touch this based on how it came off. Is this “me too movement” I thought, are these your stories, what you’ve experienced and now you’re creating this into the movie, so it’s everything that you’ve been through? It was uncomfortable at first, but I think that’s something to talk about because that was the misperception and not how it was intended” – Lilian

How Ashley Massaro’s death impacted Christy Hemme, Lita and Gail

Lilian Garcia:

I think it’s important to know why you’ve started this and then how this affected you with Ashley’s death.

Christy Hemme:

Yeah. That was for me, it was extremely heavy because… knowing her story and knowing that we had seen her multiple times and feeling like this woman needs help and she’s crying out for help and not connecting with her.

It broke my heart because I knew in my gut I knew and for me that was like oh my god. I have a voice in this world and we all go through all this stuff that when you see something is like you know, to not connect with her in that way and have regret- Which I have regret with her. I can say that for me, moving past that situation I’ll never have regret with another person that I feel compelled to communicate with in some way.

Gail Kim: Ashley Massaro want to wrestle at IMPACT just before her death

I had contact with Ashley probably a couple weeks before that and she wanted to get back into wrestling, she’s like hey Gail, is there any way you could help me with Impact Wrestling and I said, “Yeah, like definitely would love to get you back in the ring send me your stuff-” and she seemed so positive and upbeat, so just having contact with her so it was just shocking- and then I got a letter from her after.

Amy “Lita” Dumas, Gail Kim and Christy Hemmer: Kayfabe backlash from the wrestling industry and what they learned since the start of Kayfabe on Kickstarter

We had kept the secret for so long and it was protect the integrity of the vision and we knew we could ultimately just trust each other and hash out everything and talk about things when we were feeling strong, weak, bold, scared, like all those things we knew we could trust each other and we didn’t want to spread that and get other people’s interpretation. What I’ve learnt since, the main thing that I’ve learnt and this is very ironic because what we’ve talked about, working the three of us together is that we’re stronger together. And that our different journeys and our different opinions make our vision and our goal more well-rounded, easier to obtain. We shut everybody else out for the sake of our goal but what I learnt is I, I wish we would have reached out and bounced this off of other people, and even if that meant it leaked or the secret wasn’t as impactful or that- That it would have been worth it to get more opinions of the girls-

Gail Kim:

I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal to have kept it a secret I just-

Amy Dumas:

No, I don’t even mean for a big deal standpoint, I just mean that how much our different journeys all contributed to our vision of it and how just other people’s perspectives would have also contributed to that and-

Christy Hemme:

It was really unexpected the reaction for us was unexpected. We knew it was going to be like this, it would look controversial and it would you know, have awoken feeling but I was not expecting the reaction at all.

Lilian Garcia: And what was the reaction you got?

Christy Hemme:

People were very confused. They didn’t know exactly what it was that we were doing and they couldn’t tell if we were hurting the business or doing something good for the business. And I know that we’re doing something for this business. We know in our hearts that we have love in mind, we come from a place of love, so for that to not be clear for me personally that was really hard. It was really hard for all of us.

Amy Dumas:

We wanted to make sure that not only were we doing justice to whatever we wanted to talk about but that we were being sensitive and not insensitive to all other promotions and the history of the business. And so, so much time went into hashing that out, when it wasn’t perceived that way I understand now why it wasn’t perceived that way, but that’s why it was so upsetting to us because we were like oh my god, I thought we did so much homework to make sure we were not bashing the industry that we love and grew up in.

Gail Kim:

It is a fine line to walk and we knew we were going to be under a magnifying glass. The great thing about entertainment too, is like you’re creating something, you’ve got your own interpretation and then you’re creating something and people either love it or they don’t love it or they’ve got an opinion about it but if they’re talking about it, there’s something there to learn or think about, and I think for us we want to create conversations.











