WWE star Chelsea Green was euphoric after her SummerSlam victory – but that well-deserved feeling didn’t last for long.
“I’m on cloud nine, I get on this Southwest flight,” Green, 35, exclusively told Us on Wednesday, August 5. “I had just met the most amazing TSA security people asking for pictures with me in the [intercontinental championship] belt. I had taken the belt out, I was showing people in the airport. And then I get on this Southwest flight and I was boarding group one, so there’s so many overhead bin compartments. I put some stuff up, I’m getting all my snacks out of my bag. Someone comes in and they shove all their tiny little backpacks in the overhead compartment.”
Green continued, “So I go and flip them on their side. I move them all. You know, we do the bookshelf thing.”
That’s when Green — who won the interim women’s intercontinental title in a ladder match at SummerSlam on Sunday, August 2 — was confronted by “a man in teeny tiny little short shorts and a cut-off flannel” who she claims began “hooting and hollering about me putting my bag up there.”
“Immediately I’m like, ‘What the heck is going on?’” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Do you want me to take my bag away? Everything fits up there now, nothing’s squished.’ He was like, ‘Well, I don’t know why you had to put it up there!’ He just kept going. It was so overwhelming and humbling. Like in that moment, I’m just a girl on a Southwest flight that had pissed another passenger off.”
Fortunately for the new champ, there was another air traveler with a decidedly calmer temperament who helped ease the tension.
“There was a guy 10 rows back that was like, ‘Hey girl, come here. Bring your bag. I got you. I’m gonna put it above my seat. If you need it, just come back and grab it. I’ll bring it up to you at the end of the flight,’” Green said. “And he did! He was so sweet.”
The WWE superstar added, “But it was just one of those moments where it’s like, ‘Alright, back to reality.’”
Green’s title win was one of the highlights of SummerSlam weekend, with a clip of her winning garnering over 2 million views on X since Sunday night.
“When I tell you I have watched that clip from every single angle,” Green admitted. “Every single fan who posted a video on social media, I’ve watched it and I’ve tried to comment on it. I don’t know that it will ever get old.”
