10 WWE Managers Who Totally Outshone Their Wrestlers
4. Maria Kanellis (Mike Kanellis Née Bennett)
When Maria returned to WWE, she brought her husband with her. The two debuted during a segment at Money in the Bank 2017, with quite possibly the most cringe-y yet catchy entrance theme of the CFO$ era. The crowd reaction took sides like kids in a divorce - cheering mummy and booing daddy. Maria hyped up her own obnoxiousness, setting the sickly loved-up couple on the track to be compelling heels.
Creative had other ideas.
Rather than allowing the couple to advance the storyline, Maria was regularly booked to belittle and humiliate her husband whenever a mic was nearby, infamously threatening to kick him "in the vagina". Maria was made to look strong at the cost of Mike, yet this was not the initial plan. She was supposed to help her husband transition into a singles star. On the Dropkick podcast she reflected:
"I think they just kind of took a step back from us and everything they wanted to do with us, but I say this to Mike all the time that the second week we were there, we were already dead in the water.”
Maria has since stated her reluctance to participate in the angle based on her pregnancy and emasculating her husband, saying: "I begged them not to use my personal life, if they were just gonna drop the storyline. But they did it anyways."
Mike's stake on WWE gold was limited to two 24/7 Championship wins. One of these ended when Maria demanded he lay on his back and let her pin him.