The legendary Mickie James has opened up about her favourite wrestlers growing up, and named Randy Orton as someone she believes should be in the conversation of the greatest wrestlers of all time.
Speaking with Inside The Ropes‘ Lead Writer Gary Cassidy for our very special 20 Questions feature, James opened up about her favourite matches and wrestlers growing up, naming the Midnight Express and Rock ‘n’ Roll Express as two tag teams she loved watching as a youngster.
“Probably some of my favourite stuff that I’ve ever watched was, like, Midnight Express vs. Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, and it wasn’t something that I really understood how powerful it was until I went to OVW and we got all these tapes, which I still have all my tapes. We watched, obviously, because Cornette was there, but we watch a lot of tag team wrestling and stuff. I think that the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express might be one of the greatest babyface tag teams of all time. In my opinion.”
James elaborated on just why she believes the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express in particular deserve praise.
“I just think they’ve never really played a heel but the way that they would sell, the way that they would make all the towns and really get their talent, get their rivals over and just people loved them. They just love, loved, loved them and there’s a certain art to selling and I feel like that’s one of the arts that is kind of getting forgotten today, and I hope that we bring that back because that is where the emotion comes in. If you can make people believe that you’re really in jeopardy and hurt.”
Coming to the modern day, Mickie James acknowledged that Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair are the obvious choices when looking at the greatest of all time.
“I think it’s one of my I think a lot of people go to the same… Like the Shawn Michaels and Ric Flairs, who I always I mean, anything that you they literally are the GOATs. Anything that you watch of theirs is going to be amazing. They have defined how to not only make money in this business, but how to make careers and not just theirs, but other people’s careers in the business. If you’re ever going to watch to try to figure out how to become one of the greatest of all times, those are obviously your first top two that you could watch.”
“Kurt Angle, my opinion, one of the greatest of all time, he’s so incredible. The Rock. I mean, Randy Orton, in my opinion, is today’s modern GOAT in the sense of he literally can go in there… I love old school style, I love story-telling somebody he can go in there and work with anyone and I don’t ever not believe anything that he’s doing. There’s zero room for error. I believe everything that he’s doing. It’s just perfection every time. And it’s because he doesn’t cater to the bullshit and he just wrestles how he wrestles and he doesn’t care. He can squeeze your head off for five minutes. And I just love it. I love it. That’s just old school. That’s like that old school style to me that I love, that makes sense to me.”