Maria Kanellis Recalls When She Knew Her In-Ring Career Was Done

Maria Kanellis-Bennett Recalls The Moment She Knew She Was Done With Her In-Ring Career

Maria Kanellis-Bennett recently spoke with Inside the Ropes’ Liam Alexander-Stewart, where she spoke about a variety of topics. One of those topics included the day that Kanellis-Bennett knew that her in-ring wrestling career was over.

During the interview, Kanellis-Bennett said that she knew that her in-ring career was over at her last WrestleMania, which was WrestleMania 35, when she competed in the 17-woman WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal.

“So I knew I was done wrestling at my last WrestleMania,” Kanellis-Bennett said. “I knew, I knew. I walked out there and I went, ‘nope, I want to go back.’ I just knew I wasn’t done with the wrestling industry. I just was done with wrestling. Like, I didn’t want to go out there and put on a match and who knows? Never say never.”

Despite knowing she was done in April, the last time Kanellis-Bennett wrestled was in July 2019 during a mixed tag-team match on Monday Night RAW. Since then, the superstar has returned to the world of Ring of Honor, where she acts as one of the ROH Board of Directors and also runs “The Experience,” a way for fans to discuss and influence Ring of Honor online.

Maria recently spoke with WrestleZone and talked about other defining moments in her career, including the IMPACT Wrestling wedding of Braxton Sutter and Allie.

“I don’t know if there’s a match, but there is the wedding segment in IMPACT that I think is probably the biggest growth of my career because so many people still talk about it. That, and when the boys won the IWGP Tag-Team Titles in New Japan. So, I think those two moments are really, like, at least in my own head, defining moments of my career, and the Evolution match. The match at Evolution and being able to work with such an incredible group of women,” Maria explained, “and my daughter sitting out in the crowd, like aww, so good! Yeah, so, I don’t know if there’s necessarily a match but there’s moments I think are representative of my career as a whole.”

Check out the full wedding segment and other matches from Maria’s career by clicking the link below: