Notes from Ivory's appearance in Rockford, Illinois:

Ivory talked for about an hour for stories to appear in next weekend's Northwest Herald. Here are some highlights:

--Ivory has been off WWF TV for a while because of her involvement in the WWF/MTV Tough Enough 2 show. The trainers are Ivory, Chavo Guerrero, Al Snow and Bob Holly. She said the second season's group is "much more athletic" than the first group.

She also said Guerrero knows a lot of creative ways to hurt people, and he'd show Snow, who thought it was funny to experiment on Ivory. She said she can't imagine a Guerrero family reunion, with as much of a knowledge of wrestling that they must have.

--She thinks she must be the "first and so far only professional wrestler with a degree from USC." She said she thinks it is about time for her to be profiled in a story in USC's student newspaper.

--She said she wasn't sure how her character will return to the WWF's storylines, but she assumes it will be as a heel. But if Tough Enough 2 is involved in the storyline, she could become a babyface.

-- She said her role in Right To Censor was her favorite of her WWF career.

"It was something I really could sink my teeth into," she said. "It was good to have an identity, and it really helped the matches. The women don't always have that."

--She said she jumped at the chance to be in RTC.

"They came up to me and said we want to put you in and I said, yeah, baby," she said. "I had dark hair and hardly any makeup. It was Terry Runnels' idea to wear that little bowtie."

"I think I was the most hated woman in wrestling for a while," Ivory said.

She said the idea ended abruptly because "the plug got pulled and the guy who was writing for us wasn't going to do it anymore and none of the other writers wanted to pick it up."

She said it was disappointing to see the storyline end so suddenly, but she can't complain, because she was able to recover fairly quickly. "I was the lucky one," she said. "Val and Godfather just got back now."

She said Stevie Richards has been working with Tommy Dreamer in house shows. "They're still out there," she said. "But they're not quite in an official storyline yet."

--With Jazz as women's champion, she figures the emphasis will be more on the wrestling than the T&A, which suits her character better, because she's more versatile, while some others are strictly T&A.

She also would like to see Molly Holly back with the Holly family.

"She fit that role so well," she said. "She's a scrapper, and she really knows what she's doing. It was a natural fit."

--She said the cast of Tough Enough 2 spent a week in South Africa, where they trained in an outdoor arena. She said they got a chance to see exotic animals up close on safari, and she had a chance to play with 3-week-old lion cubs.

"That's when Al Snow and I would look at each other, and we knew that, for all the whining that we do about how hard the life it, this is pretty nice when you think about it," she said.

--She talked about GLOW - the all-girl fed where she worked as Tina Ferrari - and how she thinks the group helped influence the WWF to put more of an emphasis on entertainment.

"One thing we did right was character," she said. "I thought at that time, there was a definite foofing up in the WWF. There were a lot more colorful characters and it really started glitzing up. ... That's about the time they came out to say it's an entertainment show and choreographed. They put much more entertainment into it, and that led to the confession."

She laughed after calling the sports-entertainment revolution a "confession."

--She was out of wrestling after her runs with GLOW and POWW, and made her return with the WWF at a show in Phoenix as one of the Godfather's hos.

"They needed a girl who could look good in a dress and take a bump," she said. "I was to be one of the Godfather's hos and I ended up getting mixed up with Jackie and went over the top rope."

Toward the end of her GLOW and POWW runs, she began working for Revlon, where she continued to work until her WWF run.

"It finally dawned on me that these people were never going to pay me, and maybe it was time for me to be little miss business woman," she said of GLOW AND POWW. "Maybe it was time to let this fun career go. They'd be talking about tours to Japan, Mexico, Asia and Germany, and every tour would fall through."

--She said she's adapted well to the heel role in WWF, but in GLOW her character - Tina Ferrari - was a fan favorite.

"That's all I did in GLOW," she said. "I was the good-guy champion." She said she still has the championship crown she won in GLOW.

She said almost everyone she meets knows about GLOW.

"It was very odd that it became so successful," she said. "But I learned you don't want to be famous without being rich."

She said she needed a second job, where she did makeup artistry at a mall.

"I'd be putting on a lady's mascara and she'd say, 'Aren't you Tina Ferrari on TV," she said.

Ivory said in GLOW, she was "paid minimally, $400 a week to live in Las Vegas and make a TV show. The only people who have it worst are the Power Rangers, and when they get too big for their tights, they hire a new set of Power Rangers."

Of her GLOW experience, she said "there will never be another Tina Ferrari. You can't replace her."

She said one day, she may auction off her GLOW crown, but she'll need to change it back because she decided the crown they gave her for POWW was "so hideous, I took the old GLOW crown and changed the rhinestones to read POWW."

She said the shows succeeded because "they were goofy. There was nothing else like it, and that's why you watch anything on TV."

--She said being a "ho" opened doors for a few others, including Victoria, one of the "permanent hos" toward the end of Godfather's last run. Ivory said Victoria is in developmental training and "she's going to have a great career."

She said one of Godfather's new escorts found her way onto a Tough Enough 2 commercial, because they needed an ice skater for an Olympic spoof and she happened to write on her resume that she had 12 years of figure skating.

"They said, well, that's our skater," she said.

She said Jim Cornette called her for her first WWF appearance and he got her name through Howard Brody, because she did a few episodes of his women's wrestling show.

"It just shows that you shouldn't burn bridges," she said. "You never know where (your chance) will come from."

--She said she Tough Enough 2 viewers "will respect" the athleticism of those on the show this time.

Her most recent WWF appearance came after Survivor Series in a match against Jackie aired on Jakked. She said all Tough Enough 2 trainers worked that show because the contestants were in attendance.

--She said Jackie pitched the idea of becoming a ref a long time ago.

She said it began when she faced Jackie in a match that featured a referee obviously favoring Ivory. The ref stayed out for the next match, featuring Raven vs. Perry Saturn, but Jackie attacks the ref, takes his referee shirt and refs the match.

"I think it's great," Ivory said.

She said Jackie wanted to be a ref because "she wants to work."

"Our challenge is to always think of something new," she said. "The show is about guys. It's a guys' wrestling show with women in it."

She said with Jazz as a champion, she feels the McMahons and the creative staff are favoring the wrestling aspect of the women's scene.

"It's a real honor to be a part of it," she said. "Maybe later, they'll put (the title) on a big-boobed blonde, and she'll go out and gyrate. But I'm glad to be living in it now."

--She is proud of all three of her title reigns. She said the first time she really "didn't have anyone to fight," the second time she faced Moolah and Mae Young and the third time was with Right to Censor.

She said she and Tori broke ground with their women's hardcore title match during Ivory's first reign.

Feuding with Moolah and Mae Young gave her an education, she said.

"I learned to own it when you're out there," Ivory said. "They didn't care about how much time they had. They'd do their bit, no matter what, and just hog it. You have to take that attitude. No performance gets better by rushing it, and I learned that from Mae and Moolah."

She did her share of messy matches in the reign of The Kat, including matches in gravy and jello. "Everybody was getting into the slop," she said.

--She said she enjoys the fact she has played so many different roles.

"I've been with guys from Haku to Midian to Crash Holly, Al Snow and Bob Holly," she said. "Then all the Right to Censor guys, then Lance Storm and Hurricane Helms. I'm really lucky to have that chance, even if it's frustrating you're not in a real storyline. But I can say I did it."

She said her character continues to evolve, in contrast to Lita's.

"There's nothing bad about standing next to Jeff and Matt Hardy every night, but it's the same gig always for Lita," Ivory said. "She loves it, and loves working with them. But she's always the same girl, the same part. I'm lucky to be able to change a lot."

--Ivory enjoyed wearing her long skirt as part of Right to Censor, but switched to pants after "the bloody pay per view" match against Lita.

She said the skirt made it difficult for Lita to work against her in that match. "Her face shouldn't have been anywhere near my feet," Ivory said. "So then I thought, let's go to wrestling pants."

She said part of the allure of the skirt was "so the Hardyz could have me in a suplex and my skirt would fall and I'm up there in my granny panties."

-- She said Lita did consider it fortunate to have bled in a PPV match.

"You don't want it to be on Smackdown," she said. "It'll probably get edited out. You don't want to waste it."

--She said she suffered a rash of injuries in matches against Jackie at first, including her first WWF appearance.

"Some careless things were happening," she said. "And Jackie is too talented to be careless."

She said she had been in several matches against Lita where she or Lita has suffered bumps or bruises, "but there is always the I'm sorry, and I never got that from Jackie. I just kept getting beat up, and that's not professional."

She said that all is in the past and she and Jackie "are cool now."

--She said wrestlers never should think they stop learning, and even after 15 years in the business, she still considers it "important to be humble, learn from the best and don't ever think you're too hot to do better."

"Stone Cold, Rocky and Triple H will tell you they never stop learning," she said.

--She said Sara - Undertaker's wife - works out in a ring at their ranch, and she said Sara still is working toward a WWF career.

"She is a real tomboy athlete," Ivory said. "She didn't just want to be Undertaker's wife. She wants some action."

She said Undertaker worked with her, but "imagine him teaching her, considering how big he is." So Taker invited Ivory and Molly Holly to work with Sara.

"Me and Molly would tag in and out and Sara never got tired," she said. "I have high hopes she will join the women's division."

--She said Maven and Nidia's guest appearance at Tough Enough 2 was the most popular among the second class of contestants.

"They were almost better peers for them than we are," she said. "They looked at us as untouchable, but we're all just the same, just in a different spot. But Maven was an icon to them. He's dropkicking Undertaker at the Royal Rumble. He's a real attribute to what it takes. He's a decent human being. He's humble. He listens and he takes it seriously."

She pointed out that she predicted Maven's victory during the selection process of the first Tough Enough show.

"I said he's handsome," she said. "The pretty ones always win."

--She said the selection process for the second season taught her "there are a lot of out-of-shape young people who think they can be wrestlers."

"This is a physical job," she said. "Do you see any out-of-shape guys or girls on TV? Maybe you can be that way if you've got a desk job, but I don't even think that's an excuse."

She said aspiring wrestlers should "get in shape before you start cutting promos."

--She said she greatly misses the guys she began her career working with - D'Lo Brown and Mark Henry.

"D'Lo looks great, he's all thin," she said. "Mark is gigantic, but in a good way. He's not big, fat, kind of big. They're still out there training and working just like the Godfather and Val Venis were doing."