Maria Kanellis addresses the evolution in women’s wrestling: ‘You didn’t talk about your children’
Former WWE and AEW talent Maria Kanellis recently opened up and discussed how far women have come in the pro-wrestling industry.
Beginning her career in the early 2000s, Kanellis recently revealed that women with children were not supposed to talk about them.
Speaking to Wrestling Life Online, Kanellis opened up and shared the major difference between today’s women’s wrestling and the time she started.
“When I first started, if you had a kid, you were quiet about it. You didn’t talk about it. You didn’t talk about your children and bless the women that did because that schedule way back when was so much harder than what I left wrestling and You used to be on the road four or five days a week, and at the time there was no FaceTime. So you were leaving your baby at home.“
Discussing the evolution in women’s wrestling, she further continued, “You didn’t have the opportunities that you do now, as far as FaceTime and being able to connect on the phone. A lot of times, if you went internationally, you didn’t talk to anybody back home. There was no way. So the women that were able to have children back then and kept it quiet, they had to be strong women.”
Married to Mike Bennett and a mother of three, Kanellis began her career with WWE before switching promotions and working all across the world in NJPW, ROH, TNA, and even AEW.
Shounak Chakrabarti is an experienced sports journalist with a lifelong passion for athletics and storytelling. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Journalism from the University of Leeds and joined F4WOnline in 2025.
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