Post by flame3169118 on Jun 2, 2020 18:43:54 GMT -5
Former NXT talent Taynara Conti (or I guess it's just Tay Conti now as she was recently confirmed for that new Virtual Basement wrestling game) gave an interview with the Ring the Belle podcast & talked about how she was severely unhappy with the way she was used & other highlights:
She didn't come from a wrestling background, didn't even know what pro wrestling was, she thought the initials WWE had something to do with prostitution. Someone asked her one day about WWE & she thought it had to do with prostitution and she wasn't interested and said that's not for me. That's how little she knew about it going in.
She had a background in judo & how she got noticed was I guess somebody in WWE's front office saw some sexy photos of her that was taken from a photo shoot that she had done & that's how she got signed. That was the signing process for WWE. Now once they met they learned she had an athletic background in judo, but that's how she got noticed. Some dude in the WWE office looking at some website and said we've got to have her. (I thought they had stopped that recruitment process, I know that was the case years ago. Most famously Johnny Ace signing Kelly Kelly & Alicia Fox after seeing them in a lingerie magazine. I didn't know that was still how they were searching for some of the female talent)
We got to see her a little bit on NXT, but not too much. Fightful had posted a story back in January that Conti had walked out of the PC after a disagreement that sources claimed may have been financially motivated. She talked about this, she was not happy with the way she was being used & they gave her a couple of weeks off, she came back & she wanted to think things over it this was still something she wanted to do. This wasn't just a 2 week vacation, she wanted to clear her head & figure out what she wanted to do with her life and her career. Two weeks later she comes back & decides she wants to give it another shot & then all of a sudden the story pops up on social media about her walking out after a disagreement & she didn't understand why they were putting that out there & she was really confused.
That's when she came up with a new gimmick, the released gimmick. She started doing and wearing a t-shirt that had in big red letters the word RELEASED across it, she wore handcuffs as a metaphor for her creatively being handcuffed by NXT management. It was to present a release from who she was, breaking free from the shackles. She just started doing it & she went to them and said that this what she wanted to do & this is what she was doing at the live events & they didn't like that idea so she had to stop doing it. You have to give her credit, she took the initiative and tried to come up with an idea & it got shot down. She was just trying to do something to get noticed.
She had a great quote in the interview. She was growing very frustrated by all the new signees, all the new talents that they were signing & bringing into the PC and all of these talents that had more experience than her who were being signed and she just kept being passed over. So she went to management and said hey what about her & their response was well there's people coming in with more experience than you, they have backgrounds in wrestling of 10 years or more. In her mind, she didn't say this to them, but this was the first thought in her mind was (and if you take nothing else from this interview I want you to remember this quote) "If you keep signing people who have 10 years of experience & you don't use me, why do you sign people that don't come from pro wrestling?"
BINGO! That is a very smart question Taynara, that is a question that many of us have been asking for years now. It seems like common sense, but that's a very intelligent question. If you're signing people from the indies, the UK and everywhere else that have anywhere from a few years to 10, 15, 20 years experience then what did you sign Conti for, other than you liked her sexy photos from the photo shoot. Why do they sign people that have no wrestling background at all & then decide not to use them? That was her question & it's such a logical one.
She didn't come from a wrestling background, didn't even know what pro wrestling was, she thought the initials WWE had something to do with prostitution. Someone asked her one day about WWE & she thought it had to do with prostitution and she wasn't interested and said that's not for me. That's how little she knew about it going in.
She had a background in judo & how she got noticed was I guess somebody in WWE's front office saw some sexy photos of her that was taken from a photo shoot that she had done & that's how she got signed. That was the signing process for WWE. Now once they met they learned she had an athletic background in judo, but that's how she got noticed. Some dude in the WWE office looking at some website and said we've got to have her. (I thought they had stopped that recruitment process, I know that was the case years ago. Most famously Johnny Ace signing Kelly Kelly & Alicia Fox after seeing them in a lingerie magazine. I didn't know that was still how they were searching for some of the female talent)
We got to see her a little bit on NXT, but not too much. Fightful had posted a story back in January that Conti had walked out of the PC after a disagreement that sources claimed may have been financially motivated. She talked about this, she was not happy with the way she was being used & they gave her a couple of weeks off, she came back & she wanted to think things over it this was still something she wanted to do. This wasn't just a 2 week vacation, she wanted to clear her head & figure out what she wanted to do with her life and her career. Two weeks later she comes back & decides she wants to give it another shot & then all of a sudden the story pops up on social media about her walking out after a disagreement & she didn't understand why they were putting that out there & she was really confused.
That's when she came up with a new gimmick, the released gimmick. She started doing and wearing a t-shirt that had in big red letters the word RELEASED across it, she wore handcuffs as a metaphor for her creatively being handcuffed by NXT management. It was to present a release from who she was, breaking free from the shackles. She just started doing it & she went to them and said that this what she wanted to do & this is what she was doing at the live events & they didn't like that idea so she had to stop doing it. You have to give her credit, she took the initiative and tried to come up with an idea & it got shot down. She was just trying to do something to get noticed.
She had a great quote in the interview. She was growing very frustrated by all the new signees, all the new talents that they were signing & bringing into the PC and all of these talents that had more experience than her who were being signed and she just kept being passed over. So she went to management and said hey what about her & their response was well there's people coming in with more experience than you, they have backgrounds in wrestling of 10 years or more. In her mind, she didn't say this to them, but this was the first thought in her mind was (and if you take nothing else from this interview I want you to remember this quote) "If you keep signing people who have 10 years of experience & you don't use me, why do you sign people that don't come from pro wrestling?"
BINGO! That is a very smart question Taynara, that is a question that many of us have been asking for years now. It seems like common sense, but that's a very intelligent question. If you're signing people from the indies, the UK and everywhere else that have anywhere from a few years to 10, 15, 20 years experience then what did you sign Conti for, other than you liked her sexy photos from the photo shoot. Why do they sign people that have no wrestling background at all & then decide not to use them? That was her question & it's such a logical one.
