Regarding her mindset going into the steel cage match, which was set to be the “finale” of the feud, Stratus was well aware of fans thinking the storyline was dragging.

“This was huge for me,” Stratus said. “Knowing what we had dealt with as far as our storylines and people were going, ‘This storyline’s still going?’ I’m like, ‘Please.’ It’s funny, Mickie, because I think there was a bit of that, ‘This story is dragging,’ but booking is booking.”

Stratus touched on how fans talk about how long her rivalry with Mickie James lasted going into WrestleMania 22. Back then, they didn’t have the luxury (or “not-luxury”) of reading opinions on social media.

“We didn’t have to deal with that,” Stratus noted. “And this was always my gauge — what’s the fan engagement? What is the audience doing? How are they reacting? I just knew at the end of the day we had to deliver. This was going to be the end button, this was going to be it. This was going to sum up all of this work and all of this story, and we just wanted to kill it. Yeah, I would say we did. It felt like it. It felt good.”