Kristal Marshall on her WWE marriage angle with Teddy Long: “I wish things went differently”

Back in 2007, Former WWE diva Kristal Marshall was involved in a long-term storyline with Smackdown General Manager Teddy Long. This culminated in an on-screen marriage where Teddy Long suffered a kayfabe heart attack and was written off TV. The following week, Vince McMahon named Vickie the new General Manager.

In an interview with Just Alyx, Kristal Marshall spoke on the storyline as well as the backstage politics that she faced during her time in the company:

Kristal: “It was fantastic! I think that was a tipping point in my career. Unfortunately, the storyline did not play out and that’s kind of one of my biggest regrets. Sometimes, when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, the recipe gets messed up right and communication gets broken down. That was a situation where there was a lot of miscommunication. Unfortunately, I think more often times than not, women tend to take the fall in those situations, especially someone as green as I was. Not to say that I did not take any responsibility for that. It was a lot on my plate. A lot too soon. I didn’t know how to handle it as well as I could have at the time.

Hindsight’s 2020. If I could go back 15 years, it would be totally different. I just think fans don’t understand that, for a lot of us, we were really young. I was 21 years old. I’d never been in a position like that before. I was still trying to learn the ins and outs of the business. So there’s a lot of growth and development that was happening. I was also playing this character, traveling on the road 365 a year, and trying to balance my personal life. That’s a lot for somebody that young and I wish things could have been different. I think that there was still so much that I could offer the business.

There was nothing that I wanted to change necessarily about the direction of the storyline. I just think that there was a miscommunication between myself and different writers. Things were said that I didn’t say and I was pegged as being difficult. So it was more of a situation like that. If I were in that situation now, instead of going back and playing telephone, I would have gone directly to the source and said, ‘hey look this is what I want to see, instead of playing tell-a-wrestler telephone one, you know? That is not the way to go about it. So yeah, I wish things were different, but I believe there’s a reason for the season and it worked out the way that it did.”

You can watch the full interview right now on Just Alyx’s Youtube channel.