TNA's Mickie James: Viddy won’t kill the radio star

Where exactly did Mickie James get the moxie to dance on Jenny Jones, jump 20 feet off a cage to settle a score and credibly pull off a lesbian stalker storyline?

Grandma?

Could be. On James’ new Viddy account she caught her grandmother letting loose to “Play that Funky Music” at Mirage, a Richmond-area speakeasy.

“She was gettin’ it,” current TNA Knockout James says with a giggle.

It’s for those kinds of moments that James recently signed up for a Viddy account. Essentially the video equivalent of Twitter, it allows people to post 15-second clips and also add audio and graphic elements. James bills herself as the first female wrestler to jump into Viddy’s world.

“It’s cool to be able to give your fans, and people in your life, a look at a lot of things that are going on,” says James, who admittedly is a bit technologically impaired and is still figuring out all the bells and whistles. “With Viddy you can show little things that are going on around the house, the kind of things going on when I’m not in the ring.”

As with Twitter, such openness can result in the random “TMI” offerings, such as her 1 ½-year-old miniature pincher, Elvis, um, taking a poop -- thankfully from a distance. (“Hey, I have to watch it every day, so why not share it with the world?” counters James, who also has a 6-year-old lab mix, Butch.)

But other videos display the many adventures a famous pro wrestler gets to enjoy, like prime real estate on Richmond International Raceway’s pit road for NASCAR star Denny Hamlin’s Short Track Showdown charity race.

“That was fun. I might’ve blown out the speakers on my iPhone, there was so much noise,” James says.

James will likely use Viddy to keep fans up to date on her continued country music aspirations. She plans later this year to release another album to follow her 2010 debut digital release, “Strangers & Angels.” James has six new songs recorded and planned to release an EP, but will return to the studio to record enough songs for a full-length album.

“I do want it to be a real career,” James says. “... I want to cross over into that and take my fan base with me in the music side. It’s been a slow process, a lot of work, but it’s been good work. It’s just like when I broke into wrestling, still learning, still perfecting. Just like I’m still learning things in the ring.”

James’ career has been an exercise in not being afraid to try anything once. But one place you probably won’t see her taking Viddy footage is a mixed martial arts card, even though the melding of MMA and wrestling has been a hot topic recently.

“I don’t really follow MMA,’ James says, adding that she’s never had any interest in competing in the cage. “I don’t think I could. I’m an artist, a performer.... There’s an art to what we do to the wrestling.... I don’t want to really fight anybody. But I did take aikido in high school. That’s more of like using a person’s resistance. I think that helped me because you learned different holds, maneuvers, adapting and taking some of the fall. Protecting yourself and your body, that sort of a deal.

“But I do not want to get hit in the face for real,” says James, a self-described sore loser. “I’ll get mad.”

Follow Josh Stewart on Twitter @JoshNASCARWWE.