After an exceptional 6 Diva tag match and a huge return by Melina last week, Diva fans were waiting with bated breath to see what was in store between the returning Melina and Divas champion Alicia Fox. WWE decided to give us a treat this week in the form of Melina vs Alicia in a non-title bout. Unfortunately for us, the action didn’t quite live up to the hype. Check it out below:
First out is Melina, who is looking great, followed by Alicia Fox, who is looking rather… interesting. The two alpha females stare each other down before the referee starts the match. Melina goes for a lockup, but Alicia scoops her up and powers her into the corner. After a fierce elbow, Alicia flings Melina across the ring by her hair. While Melina is getting her wits about her, Alicia kicks her in the gut, forcing her to retreat to the apron. Alicia tries to follow up, but Melina lands a shoulder block and slides between the champ’s legs, pulling Alicia down over her knees for a unique backbreaker and a near fall.
Before Alicia can get back to a vertical base, Melina starts wailing on Alicia with strikes to the back. Alicia tries to get back into the mix with a clothesline, but Melina dodges with a matrix move, followed by a snapmere driver and a flying faceplant. Alicia retreats to the outside to regain her composure, but doesn’t get the chance, as Melina is hot on her tail. Melina charges around the ring to bring Alicia in the hard way, but is laid out by a vicious clothesline.
Melina manages to crawl back into the ring and Alicia drags her to the middle of the ring by her hair for a two count. Still holding a handful of hair, Alicia slams Melina to the mat and lays in a elbow. Alicia whips across and attempts her patented tilt-a-whirl backbreaker, but it goes awry. However, this doesn’t stop Alicia from going for the pin for a two count. Alicia pulls Melina to her feet again (by her hair of course) and tries to slam her to the mat once again, but there was some miscommunication between the two and Melina ends up just falling to the mat face first.
Alicia immediately takes it to Melina, driving her knee into her back while wrenching back on her head. Melina fights out, but Alicia locks in yet another submission, this time an impressive Torture Rack. Melina manages to wiggle out once again, and reverses into a scary looking Last Call for the win. During the commercial break, the mysterious GM announces that Melina has earned herself a shot at the Divas Championship this Sunday at Summerslam.
On paper, Melina vs Alicia sounds like a great match, but it failed in it’s execution for several reasons. First of all, Melina has to be at least a little rusty coming in off of 8 months of inactivity. To push her into a singles match with the champion was a big mistake, especially a longer than average match like this one. I would have preferred Melina participate in a few tag teams matches, picking up wins against Alicia that way instead. I just feel like this whole situation is rushed and no one will benefit from it at the end of the day.
Secondly, WWE has allowed Melina to jump to the head of the line with little to no buildup. I truly believe this feud would benefit from having a few weeks to flourish. It seems WWE is just desperate to get Melina vs Alicia on to the PPV, which is a huge mistake. I’d much rather see the Raw Divas forego SummerSlam altogether and save this title match for Night of Champion. This way, the feud is given time to develop and Melina and Alicia get some to get used to each other in the ring. Needless to say, I’m not really looking forward to the title match at Summerslam after seeing this match.
Aside from the Diva Title feud, WWE also booked the obligatory pre-SummerSlam bathing suit match, this year dubbed as a ‘Summer Swimsuit Spectacular’. While most of us cringed when we saw the graphic for this match pop up, the match wasn’t the train wreck we were expecting. Check it out below:
We come off commercial to Jillian and Maryse already in the ring with… Santino and Koslov?!?! Great… Although Cryssi said she thought Maryse looked great last night, I’m not quite sold on her shades and Kung Lao hat combo just yet. Next out are the team of Eve Torres and Gail Kim, who make their entrance via inflatable slide (they sure got that set up quickly), which looks like a lot of fun to be honest. The Bellas Twins slide in next and our match is underway.
Bitter rivals Maryse and Eve kick things in a rather comical way, as Maryse tries to smother Eve with her hat. Eve tosses it away and goes on the attack with a Thesz press. The ladies catfight for a bit, much to the chagrin of Santino, who appears to be officiating this match, before Brie Bella tags herself in (despite standing in the middle of the apron). Bella #1 manages to get in some licks before Maryse slaps the taste out of her mouth and whips her into the corner. Maryse charge, but Brie counter with an elbow. However, Before Brie can follow up, Maryse’s partner Jillian restrains her with a beach towel, allowing Maryse to get back in control.
Jillian tags in and launches Bries across the ring with a hair beel before locking a surfboard-like submission. Brie fights her way back to her feet and hits a few booty bumps before flinging Jillian over her head. Brie crawls across the ring and tags in Nikki, who hits a flurry of strikes, followed by a slick hurricanrana and a low dropkick.
Nikki goes for the pin, but it’s broken up by Eve, who lays Nikki out with a corkscrew neckbreaker. Maryse rushes in next and sets up the French Kiss, but is ensnared by Gail with a neon pink innertube. While Maryse struggles to get free, Gail hits Eat Defeat, but is attacked by Jillian before she has the chance to celebrate. Jillian hoists Gail onto her shoulders and kicks Eve to the outside, before throwing Gail on top of her. Unfortunately for Jillian, she didn’t see Nikki Bella (who is still the legal competitor) scaling the turnbuckles. Nikki hits a flying crossbody to pull out the win over Jillian yet again.
The Bella don’t get to celebrate for long, because it seems Tamina (looking great, might I add) has made her way to the ring (via slide, I assume), and the twins retreat. Tamina stares down Santino, blocking his escape in a very strange and slightly uncomfortable exchange. Eventually, Tamina lets the Milan Miracle leave but not without a firm slap on the ass, sending Santino up the ramp giggling like a school girl.
While this wasn’t the best match Raw has ever put on, it was surprisingly good, especially for a ‘Summer Spectacular’. I thought the Divas managed to find a good balance between comedy and actual wrestling, which is new for these types of match which are usually all fluff and no substance. Also, good to see that Santino/Koslov didn’t really play a part in the match. In fact, I forgot Kozlov was even there.
The Tamina/Santino exchange was interesting, but I cant help but feel like it’s a rehash of Beth/Santino, which I wasn’t a huge fan of. On the upside, it’ll give her something to do since it looks like The Hart Dynasty/Usos feud is on hold for now.
All in all, it was a hit and miss night for Raw Divas. While Alicia and Melina failed to impress, the ‘Summer Spectacular’ exceeded expectations. I’m hoping that the less than impressive match between Alicia and Melina was a one time occurrence and that they are able to redeem themselves this Sunday at Summerslam.
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77 Comments
EBMICH: I’ve always thought that Melina since turning face wrestles like she wants to “prove she can wrestle”.
Agreed. Even though I liked her as a heel, I have to say that ever since turning face, Melina has lost some of her sparkle.
Personally, I liked the way she wrestled all the way to her “I Quit Match” with Beth. I like the aggressive mat style on her because it works with her character as a snotty A-list bitch. Her grounded moveset was also something she achieved fairly well. And I especially liked how she “stretched” it in a flashy yet classy manner–the way she would kick her opponent’s head with a leg extending across her back, the leg nelsons, the Bite of the Dragon, the splitting neckbreakers, the guillotines, etc.
But now, it’s starting to get over the top with the kick-to-splits, the ma-Trish to another kick, that move she did last night to counter Alicia near the ropes, etc…
I appreciate these things because this is her way of saying she wants to make an impact. But too much is simply too much.
And going over the top is not something exclusive to her ring work alone. Her character also seems to be getting dampened by it. It was great when she was a heel because that made you want to mangle her. But now that she’s a face, it gets quite annoying.
CRAP….. might be the last to comment… It’s morning here
by the way…I was kinda bored with Melina vs Alicia…. but I liked the ending…
not a huge fan of the Divas Match on SS but atleast there is a match..
the Swimsuit match was very disappointing especially since all girls had to wear one piece instead of Bikinis.. well that PG for ya… I loved the part with Nikki getting the hot tag with the headscissors then the neck breaker form eve then the eat defeat from gail till the ending…
HOPE NEXT WEEK’S RAW HAS A GOOD WEEK TOO
I loved how the Crowd was so into the matches
LaceyVonErichFan: “Was that necassary? Bashing on melina. She isnt overrated, you want to know overrated then check out trish stratus…”
I like Melina but, yes, I do think that she is overrated. Granted JUSTBRINGIT can add a little more class to that laughably PEDESTRIAN comment but there is truth to it.
I think people are easily getting enamored by her extensive moveset that they fail to see that she is not as clean as let’s say Molly Holly or even Trish.
Granted, Trish was a bit oversold by the WWE but you can’t deny the fact that ever since she started feuding with Lita in 2003 (or something) she always makes it a point to be clean in the ring more than to be overly flashy.
That, I think, is Melina’s problem. She used to have a good moveset that she and the other divas could handle perfectly. But now, she’s trying to push herself and the others to a point that has little room for error.
I think she should go back to her moveset when she was defending her title at a PPV with Mickie James. Granted, she can add the leg drop guillotine and the grapevine stf… but rest assured, she looked a lot better with a grounded, mostly submission-based moveset since it accentuates her flexibility. Her flexibility after all, is her greatest physical feat… not her strength and DEFINITELY not her speed.
I don’t know why people feel the need to bash Trish, she wasn’t overrated at all. She could put on good to great matches on a regular basis and worked her ass off to make a name for herself and is one of the reasons the women’s division used to be so good. The Mickie/Trish Stratusfaction botch was not clearly one person’s fault, but all the indie fans love to blame Trish and vise versa with mainstream fans so to say she can’t do a long match is pathetic. And since when is a 4-5 minute match long? The girls used to do that on a regular basis and even though they don’t always get that much time, there’s no excuse for exhaustion in this scenario. I will agree that Melina’s moveset is too complicated and there was miscommunication, why people are always trying to blame one person and not the other is beyond me.
I didn’t think Melina vs. Alicia was that bad. Melina is one of the top three women in the company and with the lack of quality women on Raw, it made sense in some ways to vault Melina to the top of the line.
On the other hand, the “Summer Specatcular” match was just plain awful. It was time filler and nothing else. WWE went through all the trouble of luring Gail kim back in last year, and this is all they have for her to do?
I honestly don’t know why some people think the match was horrible. It wasn’t the greatest match ever but it wasn’t anywhere near the worst. There were some hiccups during the match but you can’t blame just one person. Like i said elsewhere those moves that were iffy needed both women to do their part and they just had simple miscommunication. I also am tired of some people putting the blame on lesser trained divas when something goes wrong in a match. Vets can mess up as well. A good example of that is Jillian/Melina from last year. 2 vets and they botched everywhere.
And as far as Melina being overrated I do think she is but she is still a very good wrestler.
@RodneyClint- Just something I’ve noticed. The longer the matches are, the model girls are quickly out of breath it seems. And I’m not bashing Trish. I honestly do think she tended to get sloppy when her matches went longer than five minutes(/around) or so. Its from my own point of view, food for thought. Your not right, and neither am I, its based off our own views and that’s that.
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- Also I didn’t blame Alicia alone, I said it a couple times, it was BOTH WOMEN.
And calling someone overrated is irrelevant, seriously. Its pointless to start that crap because we can all point fingers at someone at some point.
“Eve is showing a lot of fire as previously mentioned, has she been reading Diva Dirt?”
I hope not, given that most of the comments from this year have been slightly short of rude and harsh ( commenting on her looks on twitter, and hell most wouldn’t even put theri dislike of her aside to say that they were proud of her when the wwe put out that article about how far the last two diva search winners have come since then, yes look archives here up)
“or Eve to be so favored she wasn’t involved in the finish outside of being kicked outside of the frame.”
I’m surprised at you noticing lol ha! Well that means the “brass” here and most folks are glad she’s not in the picture anymore, so the less we see of her the better I guess, she’ll be a non factor.
And ‘overrated’ as a term is thrown around way too much. People love Melina’s style and genuinely think that she’s great. That doesn’t mean that she’s overrated, it means that people don’t share your opinion. Likewise with the other divas.
People need to accept that you not liking a popular diva doesn’t automatically make them overrated.
@Stchick – Normally when I get negative feedback on my work(If I do), I like to prove people wrong. It lights a fire under my @ss you could say. That’s what I meant, lol.
Poor Eve, I feel sorry for her. She’s a beautiful girl and I like her, I hope she can make something of herself before her time is up. Also I hope she can do it very quickly so WWE won’t pull the plug on her like they did Candice. Candice was sloppy but fabulous haha..
The Alicia & Melina match wasn’t as good as I thought it would be, but I felt that match has a lot of potential. Both ladies could of been off that night; Melina’s first match wasn’t expected to be perfect because she hasn’t wrestled for over 8 months. I’m glad that they had great spots in the match and it was given more time than usual.
The Summer Slam match could go both ways, I would love Melina to lose first just so they can really build on this feud and then have her win it at Night of Champions. It would also be cool to have her lose in her hometown which would be this Sunday just to give Alicia more heat.
I feel that the match did have a lot of potential, just a few iffy spots that can easily be fixed and revamped. I won’t prejudge till I see the match this Sunday.
The bikini match was well okay, I thought it was interesting and actually had wrestling with a mix of comedy made it good.
Great crowd tonight!
As much as I like Melina, I hope she doesn’t win at SummerSlam. And not to mention I think Alicia is fully capable of being a legitimate champ (unlike Eve). But then again, WWE has a habit of allowing Divas to win their titles shortly after recovering from injuries (ex. Maryse) or keeping it while injured (ex. Michelle, Maryse, and Trish). Either way Alicia FTW.
As far as the Summer Swimsuit Spectacular goes, I actually like the idea of one-pieces! I remember when Maria was complaining about how it’s impossible to wrestle in a bikini on a PG show without having a wardrobe malfunction, and she really did have a point. I really wouldn’t want to Google a Diva, only to find wardrobe malfunction pics (remember what happened to Maryse at Fatal 4-Way?). And who says one-piece bathing suits can’t be sexy? All the girls looked FABULOUS (especially the Bellas with the retro look).
why couldnt they do a raw diva battle royal to make a number one contender for alicias title? and have melina still win but then get beat up by alicia after the win to set up the whole feud for noc……and tamina looked great its nice to see her in something different and her hair up is nice…..
and jillian and gail should move to smackdown and give lay cool a little competiton cause sd is boring seeing the same girls wreslting each other
seasons-of-love: “And ‘overrated’ as a term is thrown around way too much. People love Melina’s style and genuinely think that she’s great. That doesn’t mean that she’s overrated, it means that people don’t share your opinion.”
I get what you mean. Before I explain my stand, I must say that I do LIKE Melina.
However, I said she is “overrated” because some people, based on the comments I’ve read on Diva-Dirt, Youtube, Dailymotion and other sites, tend to over glorify her in ring acumen because of her moveset alone. In my opinion, good in-ring work is not about how many moves you can do but rather how many moves you can do well consistently.
It’s the same case with pro-wrestlers like, let’s say, Shelly Martinez. She and Melina can do a lot of moves but they can’t do all of them well.
Plus, some of Melina’s moves require a nigh impossible degree of precision in force while others tend to not make sense (like that slow kick that falls into a split.) I get what she’s trying to do and I do appreciate her for it but I think that she can’t neglect proper execution for the sake of show-boating.
@TheCryingLight
True but melina isnt as overrated as trish was sure she was a great wrestler but was oversold too much just like mickie james started doing a bit after the golden era ended, WWE arent so high on melina as they were for mickie and trish. Speaking of overrated angelina love is starting to be Queen Overrated TNA have to stop using her too much, too much wins and too much reigns, i first rather see a tag title on her.
OZZYV: “Just something I’ve noticed. The longer the matches are, the model girls are quickly out of breath it seems. And I’m not bashing Trish. I honestly do think she tended to get sloppy when her matches went longer than five minutes(/around) or so. Its from my own point of view, food for thought. Your not right, and neither am I, its based off our own views and that’s that.”
That is honestly a very interesting observation.
In my case, I didn’t notice it in her Raw main event with Lita, her first title defense against Mickie, her first defense against Melina and her last match against Lita. But I can’t remember all of her matches. I think her messiest is her Wrestlemania with Mickie.
Can you site others? I actually think you’re going something with this.
@LaceyVonErichFan – I get what you mean. But, honey, I think we should properly differentiate being overrated and overused / sold. Trish was overused but I don’t think she was overrated given the fact that, in my opinion, fan have never generally seen her as an in-ring technician. Of course, it didn’t help that she blossomed at the time of Molly Holly who, in my opinion, was one of the best wrestlers at that time. :)
Jillian throwing Gail to the outside on Eve was a definite highlight, perhaps Gail is right, WWE may be heading the right way for the divas division, just throw away the stupid gimmick matches and we could actually get quality wrestling (if they’re given time).
i thought the crowd was chanting that alicia was a crack whore lol….the match was sloppy & should have been more of a fight then moves….or melina with submissions..
loved that gail got signs
the 3 way tag match was good considering gail wasnt even used in most of the match at all..
eve is growing on me more but she wasnt used much either…
bellas did good here & jillian can work with anyone even if she loses all the time lol..
maryse should be a manager only shes just so awkward inring lol..
tamina looked good even if it made no sense for her to dress or be in the ring at all lol but its the first time i thought she has looked good..
i agree with many of you…melina was way better as heel
when she was heel i tried to imagine her becoming face but i couldnt….the way she moves the way she looks at her opponent her screams…etc everything about her goes with being a heel
i still enjoy watching her as face but she was better at first
@TheCryingLight- perhaps on an ocassion when the topic is about Trish and wrestling skills..I am sorry but I don’t wish to start a debate on how good or how bad Trish really was. She’s one of my favorite divas and aside from that I don’t want to begin another neverending war. Good Day to you.
i was expecting more of a Maryse & Alicia vs Melina & Eve for her return match. but i guess because of the swimsuit thingy that wasn’t to be.
ozzyv: Alright. :) Some other time then. For the record, I wasn’t trying to start anything. I was genuinely interested in the theory.
typo: “something” = “somewhere.”
@The Crying Light – I understand. And also, I’ve read where you can rip people to shreds with your knowledge and insight, albeit in a very tactful manner. But still, I don’t want to be the next one to walk away with my tail between my legs haha. Besides, your seriously one of my favorite posters. Unless you go against Lita, then I don’t know lol.
Im happy good week at least there using all divas for somthing right and like i said before everybody wanted melina back but all of a sudden you guys are bashing her anyways cant wait to see her match