GFW Knockout Laurel Van Ness recently took part in a Global Force Wrestling media conference call earlier this week to discuss all things GFW.
During the call, our friend Raj Giri of WrestlingInc.com asked LVN about the influences she’s had on creating her character.
“My character has kind of been the brainchild of everyone,” said Van Ness. “Dutch [Mantel] and I worked on the character when I cut a promo after I was left at the altar. And Dutch kept kind of pushing me to get a little bit crazier and a little bit crazier. And the finished product was a promo where I was drinking champaign and singing the Song of No Tomorrow and it blew up.”
Van Ness (Chelsea Green), who was a contestant on WWE’s Tough Enough back in 2015 as a replacement for Dianna Dahlgren, made her debut with what was then known as TNA Wrestling (now known as GFW) last year. In March, her “maniacal” character began.
“Like I did not realize how insane I would look or how much people would love it. But from then on, everyone has kind of given me their input and their take from what this character is or what crazy people come into their life or what they’ve done that maybe I can include in my character,” said Van Ness. “And I really appreciate that because every single person has a take on what this crazy hot mess jilted bride should be like and I’ve been able to include some of those things in my promos, in backstage segments and in the ring. And I love that, I can’t totally take credit for it because it really has been every single person in the locker room and backstage working on this with me.”
During the GFW media call earlier this week, LVN also spoke about dating current WWE Superstar Zack Ryder in real life. Van Ness was asked what Ryder thinks of her character and what it’s like in general to date someone in the same business working for a rival company.
“We call it the inter-promotional relationship but he loves the character, he thinks it’s absolutely ridiculous and he absolutely loves screenshotting pictures of me being crazy and sending them to me to be funny,” said Van Ness. “So it’s kind of a running joke we have going where every Thursday I get a new picture of myself and I didn’t know I could look, you know, that crazy.”
LVN continued, “On the relationship side of things, it really doesn’t matter who we work for or what company we work for or even if we were both wrestlers or not. At the end of the day when we come home we don’t take work home with us and we talk about normal things that you know, what flowers we’re going to plant in the garden or what tile is going to go in the house, you know. We’re not sitting there at the dinner table talking about what spots we can do in our next match so I think surprisingly you would be very bored if you sat with us and listened to our conversations.”
(H/T: WrestlingInc.com)
