Maria Kanellis Elaborates On Why She Wants Divas Championship To Return

Maria Kanellis

Fresh off her prior comments on the WWE Divas Championship, Maria Kanellis has doubled down on her plea to see the infamous championship brought back.

Maria Kanellis has been in the news recently, stating her desire to see WWE bring back the old Divas Championship design. Kanellis noted that the diversity shown in modern wrestling meant there was no longer a singular definition for ‘sexy’, as the butterfly-adorned Divas Championship represented.

Having seen rebuttal to the return of the design from various personalities, including WWE Hall of Famer Trish Stratus, Maria reaffirmed her stance on the situation in a quote-tweet to Stratus, noting that it’s only the championship she wants to bring back, not that period of wrestling history:

“First, I love U! Second, I don’t want that time in wrestling to come back but I do think that a lot of people loved that being strong can be sexy. That you can own you sexuality in whatever way you choose. For a lot of people the Divas era gave them the confidence to be themself.”

In a follow-up tweet, Maria Kanellis explained what the Divas Championship meant to her:

“It represented more than wrestling. For me it represented opportunity and the chance to be in an industry that I love.”

Maria Kanellis spent two periods in WWE, first from 2004 until 2010, and then from 2017 to 2020. Her first period saw Maria regularly wrestling icons of the Ruthless Aggression Era, including Stratus and Mickie James, while her second saw Maria, alongside husband Mike Kanellis, struggle to fit back into WWE.

She now resides in IMPACT Wrestling, where she’s a one-time Knockouts World Champion.