Christy Hemme, Lita & Gail Kim Discuss Ashley Massaro’s Death, Their Kayfabe
Photo by George Napolitano/FilmMagic
Lita, Christy Hemme, and Gail Kim were recent guests on Lilian Garcia’s podcast, Chasing Glory. During the episode, the girls spoke openly about the death of Ashley Massaro and how it affected them all individually as well as their Kickstarter project, Kayfabe.
The following quotes were passed on to Wrestlezone by the Chasing Glory team.
Amy “Lita” Dumas, Gail Kim and Christy Hemmer: Kayfabe backlash from the wrestling industry and what they learned since the start of Kayfabe on Kickstarter:
Amy Dumas: We had kept the secret for so long and it was to protect the integrity of the vision and we knew we could ultimately just trust each other and hash out everything and talk about things when we were feeling strong, weak, bold, scared, like all those things we knew we could trust each other and we didn’t want to spread that and get other people’s interpretation. What I’ve learnt since, the main thing that I’ve learnt and this is very ironic because what we’ve talked about, working the three of us together is that we’re stronger together. And that our different journeys and our different opinions make our vision and our goal more well-rounded, easier to obtain. We shut everybody else out for the sake of our goal but what I learned is I, I wish we would have reached out and bounced this off of other people, and even if that meant it leaked or the secret wasn’t as impactful or that- That it would have been worth it to get more opinions of the girls-
Gail Kim: I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal to have kept it a secret I just-
Amy Dumas: No, I don’t even mean for a big deal standpoint, I just mean that how much our different journeys all contributed to our vision of it and how just other people’s perspectives would have also contributed to that and-
Christy Hemme: It was really unexpected the reaction for us was unexpected. We knew it was going to be like this, it would look controversial and it would you know, have awoken feeling but I was not expecting the reaction at all.
How Ashley Massaro’s death impacted Christy Hemme, Lita, and Gail:
Christy Hemme: Yeah. That was for me, it was extremely heavy because… knowing her story and knowing that we had seen her multiple times and feeling like this woman needs help and she’s crying out for help and not connecting with her.
Amy Dumas: It broke my heart because I knew in my gut I knew and for me, that was like oh my god. I have a voice in this world and we all go through all this stuff that when you see something is like you know, to not connect with her in that way and have regret- Which I have regret with her. I can say that for me, moving past that situation I’ll never have regret with another person that I feel compelled to communicate with in some way.
Gail Kim: Ashley Massaro wanted to wrestle at IMPACT just before her death. I had contact with Ashley probably a couple of weeks before that and she wanted to get back into wrestling, she’s like ‘hey Gail is there any way you could help me with IMPACT Wrestling?’ and I said, “Yeah, like definitely would love to you back in the ring send me your stuff-” and she seemed so positive and upbeat, so just having contact with her so it was just shocking- and then I got a letter from her after.