After Ring of Honor went on hiatus following Final Battle 2021, Maria Kanellis and her husband Mike Bennett joined IMPACT Wrestling.
Their contracts with IMPACT ended in October 2022, leading to the duo, along with Matt Taven, to sign with AEW.
Speaking to Steve Fall of Wrestling News, Maria explained her decision to sign with AEW.
"AEW is the best situation for my family right now, the schedule is the best. I also love growing and building with companies. I worked for Ring of Honor and we built the women's division, with Bobby Cruise. Building is really interesting to me. For us, it's the best schedule we could possibly have with kiddos," she said.
When asked about fan criticism and fans who claimed she didn't like WWE because she signed with AEW, Maria replied, "I don't hate WWE. I had great conversations before we made our decision on where we were going to go. My husband had great conversations before we decided where we were going to go. That's the thing that people also need to realize, a lot of us keep great relationships everywhere. Triple H and Stephanie (McMahon) sent huge baskets to our house, full of all these kid gifts after both of my kids. It's these baskets of rocking horses, clothes, all these really nice gifts for both of my children. Of course, I appreciate that they did that for us back then, and I still think highly of them today. What they're doing is great. I'm excited to see friends like Mia Yim go back and whoever else is probably going back. That's fun. I still have a great relationship with Scott D'Amore. It wasn't like, 'I hate IMPACT, I'm leaving.' No, this was the best decision for my family."
She continued, "People saying, 'How could you not go back to WWE?' It doesn't necessarily mean we won't go back at some point. Right now, this is our best decision. Tony Khan is a great boss and he's been treating us tremendously. I'm excited to see where we go in this crazy industry. Doors are never shut, they're just forgotten about a little at the moment, and then maybe you'll come back to it."
Maria is the manager for The Kingdom (Mike Bennett & Matt Taven) in AEW. Bennett recently challenged Darby Allin for the AEW TNT Championship on the January 6 episode of AEW Rampage.
Elsewhere during the interview, Maria discussed the possibility of AEW doing an all-women's show. You can find her full comments by clicking here.
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with a h/t and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
