Mickie James was recently a guest on The Kurt Angle Show, where she spoke about having pitched her Hardcore Country gimmick to WWE.

"It was cool and it was cool to be aligned with Alexa because I knew that they had big plans for her. She's so fun and she was really cool. Just, it was fun to work with her. I feel like she was very open to just different things for me and ideas and my input. Also, I think that she has a whole different audience than myself because it's a younger, demographic, and in that cosplay kind of thing, which is not my wheelhouse or realm at all. So it was to see our personalities, and just like an old school versus new school kind of team-up, it was different because they hadn't done it, and it was fun. It was fun and we had a lot of fun. I just enjoy it. It's the locker room for me and it's the boys and the girls there. I felt like I was just taking every moment -- because it was something that I didn't think was going to happen -- as a blessing and just enjoying it for what it was and for however long it lasts."

"I had hoped for and I wish, too in hindsight, that I would have would pitched more or tried to push more for the Hardcore Country character because it was something that I brought up there that they just never really understood or bit on. But it's almost like a blessing in disguise, because had they bit on it, I probably wouldn't have been able to come back and do this thing at the Rumble and [have] it go down the way it had. So everything happens for a reason."