Women’s gimmick matches in the past were viewed as punishment per former WWE Diva Melina.
In a recent interview with WrestlePurists, Melina detailed her thoughts on some things from the divas era trickling down into today’s age while also revealing that gimmick matches used to be punishments back in the day.
“We’re blessed to have this contract, this opportunity, and it’s not to say that hey, let me bash the company, whatnot. There’s so many structures, like the top person has to delegate to this person and then these people. It’s like, it can’t be controlled unless it’s delegated. So I can’t blame the whole entire company, whatever, but this is the thing. There are things within the roster where things should change, but it hasn’t. It’s still kind of trickling from the years and the decades and the eras prior. Certain attitudes or maybe viewpoints, it’s still there. So whatever toxicity, it’s slowly getting flushed out, but not fast enough. So when it comes to a coalition or anything where it’s like, hey, girls, let’s get together, we’re lucky we have a job, but we don’t want to lose our job, and we’ve seen people come and go. It’s like, how do we go about where we keep our job but kinda like push this in [and not get heat]. We’d kind of come together, and then it’s like okay, pick your spots, and we’d get punished. Our punishment was, ‘Hey, here’s a lingerie match right after you did something extraordinary,’ or here’s like, I don’t know, a swimsuit match. They would do stuff like that to kind of see what we’d do. It’s like okay, what are they gonna throw at us at this point? I turned it into, in my kind, I turned it into like a game. Like okay, let’s see what they’re gonna have us do now. [Laughs]. Okay, they wanna see our reaction to this.”
Melina to WrestlePurists
Earlier this year, Melina made a surprise return to the company as a part of the Women’s Royal Rumble match.
H/T to Fightful for transcription
Follow Corey at @CoreyBrennanBS on Twitter
If you enjoy Bodyslam’s content, you can help donate to the site here. You can also visit our PWTees store and buy Bodyslam official merchandise here.
You can listen to all of Bodyslam’s podcasts by following us on Spotify and subscribing to our YouTube Channel, or any of your favorite podcast platforms.ⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘ
