WrestleZone’s Dominic DeAngelo had an hour-plus long conversation with Ring Of Honor‘s Kelly Klein before she steps in between the ropes this Friday to challenge Women Of Honor Champion Mayu Iwatani for the WOH belt at ROH’s 17th Anniversary Show in Las Vegas.
In the second part of the interview, Klein talks about how she didn’t watch pro wrestling growing up, but how she got herself acclimated to the genre and finding many relations between that, organized sports and theater. Quotes are below:
Kelly Klein on her pro wrestling knowledge growing up and acclimating herself to it’s history when she began training:
I didn’t watch any. I wasn’t allowed. I didn’t watch wrestling. I went to my brother’s wrestling meets. That was it. Yeah, so there is a lot of history but I was not experiencing as it was happening at all.
I had to do a lot of work to go back and absorb as much as I could and learn as much as I could so a lot of things that a many people probably came into training, already having certain knowledge and experiences and remembering how this made them feel and that made them feel, I didn’t have that so I had to go back and I did. I don’t know, if everybody that’s not, I would highly recommend it to go fill in the blanks, the history of everything, but I went back and watched what I could as far as whether it was watching matches, or documentaries,interviews. I read some autobiographies and I tried to get caught up as much as I could. I remember watching certain matches that I was was experiencing for the first time.
It was a little different because I didn’t get to watch the week to week storytelling and build-up to things so there’s really no way to totally replace that but I try to do the best I can and still try go back and learn and hear from different perspectives. Like even now, listening to different podcasts and you hear a different side or a different perspective on something that happened in wrestling history, so yeah, that’s what I was doing, but I was hooked immediately the first time I went to a Heartland Wrestling Association event because I had grown obviously being very physical and competitive but I also grew up in theater and entertainment and that was the first time that I saw something that was everything that brought it all together and didn’t conflict, whereas before there was always a conflict, whether it was a schedule or what have you with theater and dance and softball. I saw wrestling and I was like, “Wait a minute, you mean I don’t have to choose? I get to do all of it. I was hooked.”
On her background in theater:
That was all through forever. I think the first musical I performed in I want to say I was 11 years old. Then after that I did a lot of community theater and in high school I participated in a musical theater certificate program at University at Cincinnati CCM [College-Conservatory of Music] and I completed that. That was an overly intensive program that I got to be apart of.
Then in college I performed in some opera and theater productions and then after college I’ve done a little bit of sort semi-professional theater. Like it’s professional theater, but it’s not enough, you know you don’t to get paid enough to live off of. It’s just like in anything you work your way up. It’s like when you’re in the developmental in whether it’s wrestling, or baseball or theater or whatever, you’re making ends meet you still have to have your side gig while you pursue your dream kind of thing.
On what her favorite role is:
Probably one of my favorite all-time roles was Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes by Cole Porter.
One of those things that was really special about it was, I’ve actually been in that show three times and the first time when I was, gosh, probably like 14 or 15 and I was just a featured dancer and when I was 16 I was one of the Reno Sweeney’s Angels which is like the lead dancers…and I never expected to get an opportunity to play Reno until maybe much later in life because the way the character’s written is sort of a, like a torch singer approaching the end of her career, but I actually got an opportunity to play that role in my mid-20s, actually probably my early 20s, because it just worked out that I was the person that could sing what they needed to be sung and I could tap dance and I could do what they needed to do so they worked it out where the age wasn’t a big factor so I got to play that part that I just didn’t think was going to be on the table for me and it was so much fun.
On that unique bond you share from being in theater, sports and wrestling:
It’s really interesting but not only the way the schedule is, but also just the things that you’re going through, you really really bond with people and then of course definitely during like tech week and during the performance runs you are with the same people from when you get up to when you go to sleep and you’re all going through the same things and this is like you said, it’s like in sports and wrestling, nobody else understands what you’re going through other than the other people that you’re performing with. Nobody understands the idiosyncrasies of the director or just the things that you’re all witnessing and experiencing. Nobody understands the schedule or you know how many times we had to run this tap number because you know, there were whatever issues with it. So you definitely form that kind of bond and sometimes it’s just this very very strong intense bond during the time and then everybody just kind of moves on and you may or may not cross paths again, but there are definitely some people who just are lifelong friends and you really can develop some amazing friendships and that’s been true of wrestling too where there are people that I run across regularly and there are people that are just like family now.
More transcriptions of this exclusive conversation will be coming this week, but you can listen to the entire interview below.
