WWE Used Gimmick Matches To Punish Female Talent

Melina remains one of the most well-known female WWE stars in the last decade or so. She made her debut in WWE during the height of the Diva’s era, something that is not looked upon with kindness now.

The Divas era in WWE largely revolved around them barely getting time to put on wrestling matches and were mostly used for gimmick matches. Most of them were heavily criticized as well.

While speaking during a recent interview with WrestlePurists, Melina revealed that gimmick matches were used as punishment during the Divas era in WWE.

“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.

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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 participated in gimmick matches such as a Lingerie Pillow Fight, a Pudding match, and a few different Bra And Panties matches. She also appeared during the Royal Rumble match this year. We’ll have to see if Melina will return to WWE or not.

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