Just thought I’d pop a little tribute in there! # Just beat it, just beat it #
They say patience is a virtue and our patience truly paid off last night, as for the first time in 6 months, the Divas got booked on pay per view and the result was everything I imagined it to be. I’ve been fully invested in the feud between Melina and Michelle McCool for the past couple of months and have been looking forward to them finally getting it on in the ring and last night’s match didn’t disappoint. I believe in these two Divas, they are fantastic in the ring and over the past few weeks have shown a lot of chemistry — put them in the ring together and I expected an awesome match & I believe that’s what we got.
First of all, all three Divas involved looked phenomenal. I loved Melina’s new red ensemble, Michelle looked great in white but the star was Alicia at ringside, who just looked beautiful in a cute summery dress with her hair tied up.
My main worry about this match was time. I’ve almost pleaded and begged on this blog in the past couple of weeks to let these girls have the time they need to put on a great match. Divas are usually constrained to 3-5 minutes, but I really felt these two Divas needed the time to go all out, especially in a championship match. Thankfully, they got around 8 minutes of ring action and 10 minutes in total for their segment which was a nice chunk of the PPV. I would have loved for them to go a few minutes longer but I can’t fault this match, I thought it was superb.
The Divas start off aggressively from the outset, Michelle starts out dominating with a knee to the stomach and few forearms but Melina comes back, she goes against the ropes setting up I believe, her hair smash but Michelle picks her up by the throat, which looked awesome – a lot of strength shown from Michelle. Melina counters into a DDT – but it looked more like a flip – and then starts pounding into Michelle. And that’s what I love about Melina, her fluidity from one move to the next, is creative and fresh.
Melina doesn’t let Michelle recuperate for a moment, continuing her assault which sets up the pace nicely — after all this is a championship match, there’s no time wasting here. Melina hits a nice backflip, followed by a clothesline and jumping neckbreaker.
Then the game-changer, Michelle kicks Melina in the leg setting up the story for the rest of the match, with Michelle working over Melina’s leg. A helpless Melina tries to fight back, showing what a fighting champion she is and incurs even more of Michelle’s fiery wrath. Michelle has done a great job in the past couple of months in upping her game and coming across even more aggressive in her matches. Michelle continues to work over Melina’s leg as the pace slows down some, but I think it’s still extremely watchable as Melina’s selling [as proven last week on SmackDown] is second to none. Michelle, showing more aggression, slams Melina’s leg into the ring post.
Fast forward a little bit and Michelle hits a very cool move, a reverse backbreaker, where she almost flips Melina 180 and her stomach meets Michelle’s knee. Michelle then channels her inner-Beth Phoenix, by contorting Melina’s body, making her foot touch her head. Melina really should just advertise ‘Stratusphere Yoga’ on her ring attire, right?
A cocky and arrogant Michelle starts to get complacent, now channeling Shane McMahon shuffling around the ring, she attempts a running knee into Melina in the corner but meets the turnbuckle. Melina gains some traction and sets up her knee smash in the corner, with less ease than usual. Michelle pretty much no-sells Melina’s knee smash, with a chopblock to Melina’s knee immediately after. Melina begins using her ‘educated feet’ to kick Michelle, wrapping her legs around Michelle’s neck and does her heel-to-the-head kick.
Melina backs into the corner and tries to do it again, but Michelle counters and locks Michelle in for the Faith Breaker. Melina manages to counter into a hurricanrana. We don’t usually see false finishes in Diva matches but I think it adds meaning as it makes the eventual finish even more important as we’ve been teased prior. Melina goes for a near fall followed by Michelle.
It’s time to go up top, folks – a nice addition to any Divas match. Michelle props Melina up for a superplex, Melina pushes her off and hits her hair smash finally! Melina, like a pro, continues to sell her bad knee as she crawls across the ring to cover Michelle but Alicia puts Michelle’s leg on the bottom rope. It’s about time A-Fox got involved, she was beginning to look like window dressing! Melina gets a measure of revenge with a dropkick through the bottom rope, which seems to have been pulled off by nearly every Diva in the WWE in the past month.
This distraction gives Michelle enough time to recover. Melina jumps on top of Michelle for the Last Call and I have to admit, when I first watched I thought Melina may just retain after all. However, Michelle counters and attempts to get Melina into finisher position but Melina lands on her fit and Michelle hits her with a vicious big boot. We get another false finish which only adds to the excitement…
Michelle finally locks in the Faith Breaker which got a pretty nice pop, sold perfectly by Melina and history is made.
These two Divas really slugged it out and tried to give you an ‘epic’ feel to the match with the false starts and near falls. People have complained that the audience were dead for the match but it’s certainly not through a lack of trying, because Melina and Michelle made a tremendous effort I think. In any men’s match that kind of technique is going to illicit a reaction, unfortunately audiences just aren’t as receptive to Divas matches. I’m not one of those people who cares about audience reaction, it is what it is. I don’t think you can ever expect a Divas match to illicit the same response from those in attendance because there’s such a double standard, the predominantly male WWE audience will tell you a Divas match is ‘shit’ even if it isn’t.
This match is definitely on my list for ‘Match of the Year’ candidate, both Divas gave their all and delivered one hell of a match, proving that Divas do deserve to get PPV matches.
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24 Comments
I definitely wouldn’t call the match superb. I didn’t like how Michelle McCool dominated the entire match basically. I wish it were more back and forth action between the two of them without Melina having the injured knee during the match. I also thought Melina was overselling her moves at times and just appeared weak compared to Michelle. On any other night, I would say Melina is amazing in the ring, but not last night =(
I agree with knockout. Michelle should teach the Art of No-Selling, while Melina sold her jacked up knee the ENTIRE match.
Match was by no means superb, it was just better than the crap we’ve gotten from all the Divas in the past year.
loved the matchh. love michellee.
&& i thought the crowd was pretty into that matchh.?
oh and when you saidd, “Michelle pretty much no-sells Melina’s knee smash.”
umm…. in case you didnt notice…. michelle put her leg up and countered the knee smashh. look closerr. so the reason why michelle didnt sell that knee smash was because she blocked in with her leg and hurt melinas knee furtherr. hense why it hurt melinas knee so badd.. duhh.
=]]
It was a good match, but Michelle’s win was met with apathy. I disagree with Melanie’s reaction comment. I think it is unfair to ask that the Divas get a reaction like Shawn and Taker got at Mania or Jericho and Mysterio got last night, but it is not unfair to ask the Divas to get a reaction. It is not impossible. Just go back a few years to the “Golden Era” and watch a match (it doesn’t even have to be a match involving Trish/Lita), and the crowd reacts and is involved. Watch a Molly Holly match (who was far from a Trish Stratus in the charisma department), and see the heat that she gets when she makes her entrance. Even when Trish wasn’t involved and the only storyline the Divas got was match after match (kind of like now), Divas back then got a reaction in their matches. Alicia got a reaction when she got involved, but Michelle is a blackhole of charisma. Michelle is a good wrestler, but she has a long way to go before the audience cares about her because she has no charisma.
match was GREAT by the wayyy…. haterz are gross.
“I don’t think you can ever expect a Divas match to illicit the same response from those in attendance because there’s such a double standard, the predominantly male WWE audience will tell you a Divas match is ’shit’ even if it isn’t.”
I haven’t seen many people say that the match was bad but rather they just didn’t care, and I expected that.
As I said yesterday, the reaction towards this match being added to the card by a lot of fans was apathy and some were dissapointed that the Divas match on the card wasn’t Mickie vs. Maryse. There really wasn’t a lot of “Oh, man, this will be a terrible match”-type reaction before the match but instead a “Whatever, I don’t care about this” reaction.
Now, whether apathy is better or worse than a strongly negative response is a matter of personal opinion. Some people would rather watch a bad match than a boring/uninteresting bout, and some feel the opposite.
i thought this was a great match, but i agree that it could’ve had more back and forth action.
I wouldn’t call the match superb, but it was a little close. It was a rather solid match and both divas shared a great chemistry in the ring :)
Michelle is just an awesome wrestler, it’s a shame that she lacks A LOT in the charisma departement, at least she’s not as boring as when she was a face (bad times for McCool…)
Alicia looked soooooooo hot, when she appeared with McCool it was like BAM :D
I just feel like these girl put in work, point blank. I appreciate it when the Divas really try and do them selves a justice, they get knocked on a lot it seems. So it was just nice to see some solid work from both of these girls. I do wish that for once that WWE would actually try and make their matches having meaning so people would start caring more but that’s nothing to really dwell on cause I’ve grown to just deal with what they give us in terms of what the Divas brand is today.
Melina was on point the whole match, from her actions in ring to her over all look. Michelle aside from her random Cross across the Chichis area of her outfit, did fine she’s growing on me. As for miss Fox now i’m proud of her for stepping up her game looks wise, cause that whole “cute” look she’s been doing for a while needed to be switched up, remember you SASSY!
ohh. & one more thingg. michelle is the most talked about diva in wrestling and love her or hate herr. shes WWEs top diva.. and her winning the womens title last night confirms itt.
When J.R calls Michelle controversial does he mean her realationship with Taker.
The Faith Breaker was beauitifully sold by Melina. Too bad Michelle can’t sell any other divas move.
A little too much screeching on Melina’s part every time she took a hit from Michelle. Was she overselling to make up for Michelle’s underselling? At least Michelle showed emotion when lifting the belt.
The crowd actually seemed really into it to me, compared to other Diva’s matches. They actually got pretty loud when Melina kicked Alicia!
I overall like this match. Melina has such a unique moveset, and I love it. Michelle doesn’t really do anything flashy, she just gets down to business and I like it, also. These two have great chemistry, and it really shows here. My only two complaints are that I wish it was a little more back and forth action since Michelle pretty much dominated Melina, and Michelle somewhat under-sells moves sometimes. But, overall, the match itself was good.
Melina’s outfit was beautiful! Michelle looks good in white and Alicia looked great as well.
Onto the match: I liked it, although, I thought the action should have gone back and forth and not with Michelle dominating the match…like she did Friday night on Smackdown!.
Melina was most definitely on point when it comes to selling moves, some divas need to take lessons lol.
I knew one day that Michelle would win the Women’s Championship, just not last night. I thought that the storyline could’ve gone a bit farther…there wasn’t anything interesting that made me want to watch this match besides the wrestling aspect.
TBH, I wanted Mickie to be the first grand slam champ, just b/c she’s been in the business almost 11 years and I think that honor should’ve gone to someone of that caliber (hope no one takes it the wrong way) but WWE had other plans obviously. I’m glad Michelle won though, b/c SD is about to get very interesting now!
Hopefully, Gail will get the push that she rightfully deserves and maybe get a second and better reign as WWE Women’s Champion. Or maybe we can see a triple threat match between Gail, Melina, and Michelle. It just has a ring to it lol.
Not to sound like a jerk or something, but Michelle is NOT a “Grand Slam” champion. A “Grand Slam” by deffinition denounces the number four. Like when HBK was called the first WWE “Grand Slam” winner only after he won the European title. The WWE “Grand Slam” was made up of the WWE World title, IC title, Euro title, & Tag title. Michelle is the first WWE “Double” champion. If she would ever to leave WWE and win the TNA Women’s title that would be a “Triple Crown” (Three titles). If FCW were to ever add a Women’s title or another wrestling promotion were to get onto TV, that could be the fourth title to make the “Grand Slam.” Maybe that’s just my take on it, but I thought I’d say something.
Kris, we refer to Michelle as a Grand Slam Champion using our OWN system, details of which can be found here: http://www.diva-dirt.com/2009/06/28/diva-dirt-announces-recognition-system-for-diva-accomplishments/
I know I read that and, to me at least, having the term “Grand Slam” go before “Triple Crown” seems backwards.
why is everyone calling her a double champion? A dual champion is one who holds 2 championships at once, so i don’t get why people are calling it that. She is not a double champ, she just has held both. Jeez.
Kris – It may seem backwards to you, but we choose to give the terms a different meaning for our website. There are only a certain number of championships available to the women in WWE – two – therefore we believe that by winning both that would be the female equivalent to a male Grand Slam.
But like I say, the Female Grand Slam is something we’ve created. It’s not an industry standard, it’s just how we, as fans, have chosen to interpret the Grand Slam for the Divas. It may seem backwards to you, but different things have different meanings to different people. So in this case, by our standard, a Female Grand Slam = the two WWE titles and a Triple Crown includes the TNA title.
Great match, great outcome. Im really happy for Michelle, she definitely deserves it, all this talk of Michelle doesnt deserve this honor is pure crap, she has worked harder than any diva in the past year and its paid off. Shes showed that she is a top diva in the ring and can pull a decent promo in the last month. Im really excited to see where it goes from here, id love a Michelle-Gail feud because they share great chemistry and their matches on Smackdown were epic. But I see this feud continuing on until the next ppv at the least, especially since Melina can use the fact Alicia interfered as an excuse to dropping the title.
This was a good match and I’m really proud of both divas for entertaining the fans. they both looked great (alicia too) and i’m extremely happy for michelle.
I liked the match, but wished that Melina would have retained and continued the fued to Night of Champions then have a mini fued between McCool and MIckie on who would be the first to hold both belts.
Well I happened to love this match. It was so worth it to watch Melina beat the crap out of Michelle at the beginning. Lol, she scored some pretty good shots so I’m appeased. Plus their in-ring chemistry is mind-blowing!
I thought it was a good match, not that technical but good psychology.