As noted earlier, Mickie James recently spoke to Scott Fishman of The Miami Herald. Here are some highlights of the second half of the interview.

On Velvet Sky:
“I love Velvet. She is a sweetheart. She is fun, and the company is
really behind her now. They have really started to make her the face of
the knockouts. I always try to do my best when I work with anyone and
make sure the match as a whole is as wonderful and spectacular and tells
that story as much as it can. She is awesome.”

On Women's Wrestling and the WWE Divas:
“For me, and granted I don’t watch as much WWE programming as I used to
when I was part of the company, but I think that has a lot to do with
how much trust they have with those people in those matches and telling
those stories. Trish [Stratus] said it in her [WWE Hall of Fame] speech
that this golden era of women who were some of the best women’s
wrestlers in the world, and they aren’t there anymore. This is all over.
This isn’t just within that organization."

“With the exception of
Nattie [Neidhart] and Alicia Fox and ones like that, they haven’t been
maybe wrestling long enough, but I’m not going to bury anybody. I don’t
like doing it…But I learned so much valuable, little things, on the
independent circuit coming up the hard way that you can’t learn in just
starting to learn how to wrestle in developmental. You can’t. It’s
impossible, but there were tons of stuff I learned in developmental.
Granted, it was different when I was coming up just because when the
business changes everything kind of changes. There were lessons that I
learned and all things that made me a superstar. This is what molded me
and made me kind of form that I was in the ring.”

On not being used as much as she had hoped lately in TNA:
“I think this is a conscious decision I’ve made within myself,” James
said. “I wanted to be more real with myself and my fans because I feel
like I have been sitting at home a lot lately and more than I should.
Especially, while knowing who I am in the ring and what I’ve done and
accolades I have and the level of wrestler that I am when it comes to
females in this industry. I feel like often times that gets overlooked,
which is bull because if I was a male in this industry that would not
happen. But because I’m a woman in this ever-changing cycle of sex
sells, this sells or that sells.

“At the end of the day there are
very few and far between of those who can stand toe-to-toe at the same
level…That is what frustrates me. I can’t stand sitting on the sidelines
and watching. I don’t think anybody as a professional or as an
entertainer or as an athlete can stand. If I was injured, then that’s
one thing, but to be completely 100 percent healthy and be doing
absolutely nothing. To me, it built up my frustration up to the point of
being just pu###footing around as the girl-next-door with a big smile
on my face and happy about every little thing when in reality I’m
frustrated.”