Lisa Marie Varon may be finished in the squared circle, but the former WWE Women’s Champion continues to grow outside of the ring and has three of her closest friends in wrestling at her side.
Varon recently spoke with WrestleZone Managing Editor Bill Pritchard to give the details on her new web series “Grown Ass Women” with Mickie James and SoCal Val every week on YouTube. She said they’d always tried to get together for a project over the years but it didn’t materialize until now. Varon noted Mickie was the one that came up with the name for the show (GAW for short) and said it’s a very fitting title considering where they are in their respective careers.
“It’s fitting. Very fitting cause you know, because we’ve been in the industry—Mickie is still in the industry—and we are grown up women now. We’re adulting right now which sucks. I don’t like adulting,” Varon jokes before stating how they want to engage fans, whether it’s in the live stream chat or on their Patreon.
“We’re very fan interactive so fans can ask questions. This technology stuff. It took me forever to get ahold of you on this thing but SoCal Val is genius. She doesn’t claim to be, but she’s the one that figured all this stuff out. When you get three chicks talking, it’s gonna go on tangents so we’re not upset if we don’t hit everything,” Varon said. “We just have this material that ends up being very organic. We don’t really want to be an hour show. We try to keep it under 45 minutes.”
Lisa is now retired from in-ring competition, last stepping into the squared circle against Melina at a Masters Of Ring Entertainment event last fall. Lisa didn’t know it would be her last match going into the event, but she explained when she knew it was the right time to call it quits against Melina, an opponent she’d surprisingly only had one singles match with prior to her farewell bout.
“I didn’t plan on my last match to be that night, I’ll be honest with you. The promoter said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it was your last match? I would have promoted it like that.’ I said, ‘You know, I decided it 30 minutes before going out.’ For how nervous I get before matches, almost turning 50 and being in a main event of a wrestling show,” Varon said, “not just a female wrestling show—it’s with males. I said, ‘We have to turn it up. I mean we have to do some dangerous stuff. We can’t just do a “ha-ha ga-ga match,’” you know?
“I was so nervous, I was about to puke, this is me every time though—I pace, I sweat, sweaty hands, nervous belly. I was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ I’m exhausted before going out to the match. I [thought], I’m main eventing. I’m getting the championship belt and it’s from a female promoter,” Varon said, “and I can’t go higher than this. I asked the referee out there, ‘Can I have the mic?’ Get the mic and said ‘Thank you guys for all coming to my last match’ and it was like (gasp)—yeah and I decided there. And I felt good about it, I wasn’t sad or anything like that. You know your body. The nervousness comes from I’m older and I don’t want people to see any weakness in my performance. I still want to work just as good as I was back in the day. I wanted to go out with people saying ‘You still got it.’”
(Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
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