Since September 2014, Mike Bennett and Matt Taven have been linked at the hip, both personally and professionally. Whenever both have been under contract with Ring of Honor, Bennett and Taven have been inseparable. Their chemistry inside the ring is undeniable, and as Bennett described to me in our recent conversation for Love Wrestling, that bond extends to far more than just the confines of the squared circle.

“What is it that you love about working with Taven,” I inquired.

“You look at Ring of Honor, and objectively, there’s a lot of great professional wrestlers there. There could even probably be the temptation for you to, I guess, try something new at the buffet!

What keeps you going back to working with Matt Taven?”

“It’s one of those things where it just feels right,” commented Bennett. “I mean, like I said, he’s my best friend in the entire world. And I feel like with this run, and we’ve been asked this before, ‘is this like, ‘oh, it’s Kingdom or nothing?” and to me, it’s like, the Kingdom’s always there. The Kingdom was there when I left. The Kingdom’s still there, [and] we’ll team.”

“But,” he continued, “Matt’s gone on and done incredible things since I’ve left. He’s become the world champion. He led the group by himself. He’s done amazing things without me. So to me, I don’t want to pigeonhole him, and I know he doesn’t want to pigeonhole me. So there’s this idea that we’ll always be The Kingdom, we’re always going to be gunning for tag team gold. But at the end of the day, too, if there’s opportunities for me to go do something with the TV title, or him to go do something with the World title or me to go do something with the Pure title, we’re not going to get in each other’s way.

In fact, we’ll be in each other’s corner cheering each other on because that’s how we view it. That’s how we look at it. It’s kind of like we’re this group, we’re this team, that we have each other’s back. And, if the opportunity presents itself for tag team gold, let’s go get it. But Matt, if you have an opportunity to go be world champ, again, you go take that opportunity, and I’ll be the first person to cheer you on. So that’s kind of like where we’re at right now. And, I think that’s probably where we’ll always be for the rest of our careers. We’ll go our separate ways, but we’re always there. The Kingdom’s always there.”

Hearing the joy he spoke about Taven and The Kingdom with, I had to ask Bennett about his best friend’s winning of the ROH title in New York City just under two years ago.

“How cool was it to see him win the Ring of Honor World Heavyweight Championship at Madison Square Garden?” I asked excitedly.

Bennett responded with equal enthusiasm.

“Oh, it was the best!” he enthused. “In this industry, it’s very rare to – you have so many acquaintances in this industry, and you have very few friends. I happen to not only have a friend, but I’ve made my best friend in this industry. And not only that, but you also don’t – other people’s successes tend not to – like for me, when Matt won, I was just as excited as if I had won, maybe more. That’s how close we are. He’s family. When your brother goes and gets a promotion or does something really good, you’re just happy. You’re not jealous, you’re not envious, you’re just genuinely happy for your brother, your sister, your mom, or your dad or whatever, and that’s how I am with Taven.”

“He won and my excitement was just – I was genuinely just happy for him. I was like ‘that was well deserved.’”

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any of the above quotations used.

On Christmas Day 2019, Chelsea Green made her long-awaited WWE debut with an appearance on Monday Night RAW against Charlotte Flair. Months later, the Victoria, BC native would once again see her working with the Queen, teaming with Flair to take on Io Shirai and Rhea Ripley.

Teaming with one of WWE’s top stars right out the gate is quite the auspicious start to a career, and as part of our upcoming conversation for Love Wrestling, she and I chatted about her debut on RAW as well as the opportunities she got to work with a woman many consider the best in the business today.

I began by admitting that I was a bit surprised by her RAW debut. Unlike so many wrestlers prior, I commented, she hadn’t received weeks of vignettes or any of the traditional fanfare that usually comes with a main roster call-up.

“It’s funny because a lot of girls told me that that day when I was going out to have that match with Charlotte,” Green responded to me. “I was really excited! I didn’t care. I’m like, ‘I don’t care if this is my debut or not, I’m going to be on friggin’ RAW, and my family is going to get to see me, and all my friends and everyone that has seen me work so hard for six years, they’re going to see me on Monday Night freaking RAW! So, I don’t care what happened, but a lot of the girls did tell me like, ‘don’t worry, you know, this might seem like your debut, but actually, they’ll probably do this and then take you off TV and then repackage you,’ and stuff like that.

“So it has happened to a lot of people,” she said. “It’s just, we forget, right? In wrestling, we like to forget those things, and then we remember what we want to remember, which is the big, grand debuts and the storylines and things like that.”

After agreeing with her, I asked her about her experiences working both with and against Women’s Grand Slam Champion Charlotte Flair.

“I was a little bit nervous!” she admitted. “I don’t really get nervous about my opponents. I think with wrestling, it’s all hype, and if you believe the hype as a wrestler, it’s a little bit cringe-worthy. So I try to just go in, and everyone is equal because guess what, some of the least-hyped wrestlers are the best and vice versa. So I went in, and I tried not to think about who it was or who that name was. But, you know, I was nervous for my debut and everything.”

“It was really cool to look back on the moment and see the pictures and see that when Charlotte and I stood next to each other in the ring, we looked equal. I don’t know what it is about our statures, but we’re basically the same size. When you put us next to each other, it was kind of like chocolate and vanilla. It was the same thing! It was two tall, pretty built women that can put on a fight. I just loved the pictures that came from that.

And then to then a couple of months down the road, be able to team with her was – it was really, really cool. It was also – it was something that will go on my resume and kind of my track record. I didn’t think about that like, ‘oh, okay, yeah, I guess I was briefly Charlotte’s tag partner!

“

Please credit Spencer Love/Love Wrestling with any transcriptions used.