After Monday night hit-and-miss match between Melina and Divas champion, Alicia Fox, fans and critics alike were curious about how these two would fare at SummerSlam with the title on the line. While it wasn’t as sketchy as Monday’s match, these two hardly put on a mat classic. Check out the match below:
Out first is the champ, sporting some new attire. I’m not crazy about it, but it’s probably my favorite out of her new pinata gear. Melina is out next and… wow. Going all out for her hometown return, Melina has donned an over the top and blindingly bright Vegas showgirl outfit, complete with headdress and feathered boots. While it may not be my cup of tea, I have to give Melina points for originality and creativity. Rarely do we see a Diva put so much effort into her ring gear, so kudos to her.
After a few awkward moments of Melina removing her boot covers, the referee rings the bell and our way is underway. The two fierce competitors square off in the center of the ring, each trying to assert their dominance and show their opponent that they’re not intimidated. At long last, the Divas lock up with Melina getting the upper hand and muscling Alicia into the corner. The challenger breaks clean and they tie up again, but this time Fox get the advantage with a headlock followed by a takeover. Melina manages to get to her feet and to the rope, forcing the champ to break the hold.
After breaking the hold, Alicia decides to shove Melina, who is not having any of it. The challenger hits a few forearms before trying to whip Alicia across the ring. Alicia tries to reverse it, but Melina slides past and hooks the ankle, taking Alicia down to the mat face-first. Not giving the champion any time to breathe, Melina applies a modified Indian Deathlock and from that position stomps Alicia’s face into the mat. Alicia retreats to the corner to collect herself, but Melina lets loose with a shoulder block and double knees to the midsection.
Before Melina can continue her assault, Alicia starts grabbing at her own jaw, still feeling the effects of that curbstomp earlier. The ref goes to check on her, and as soon as Alicia sees that Melina has let her guard down, she goes on the attack. Unfortunately for Alicia, Melina has her scouted and countering with a Flapjack for a two count.
Melina goes for another Irish Whip into the corner, but Alicia reverses, sending Melina toward the turnbuckle. Melina manages to leap over Alicia, but upon landing she immediately starts favoring her knee. Uh oh…
Sensing her opponent’s weakness Alicia goes for a clothesline, but Melina execute an awkward matrix, before hitting an elbow and a kick to the jaw. Alicia rolls out to the apron and Melina pursues her, but the champ pulls her into the turnbuckle shoulder first. Alicia continues her attack on the arm with a stiff kick. Alicia drags the ‘Paparazzi Princess’ back into the ring and grounds her with an elbow to the head before driving her knee into the injured shoulder of Melina.
Melina scrambles away from the champion, but Alicia catches her and applies an armbar. Melina manages to get back to a vertical base but is met by a knee to the gut. Alicia throws Melina into the corner, but fights back with a kick to the gut followed by… well, nothing. The match comes to a standstill as both Divas seem to be at a loss as to what’s next. Thankfully, the moment quickly passes and Melina rolls Alicia up for a near fall.
Melina lashes out with a few weak looking forearms, followed by a dropkick. While Alicia is laid out on the ropes Melina drives both her knees into Alicia’s back and follows up with a Snapmere Driver (SHIMMER down now!) for the win becoming the new Divas Champion.
As Melina celebrates, Josh Mathews makes his way to the ring to interview the new champion, but before he can even finish his first question, he is interrupted by Lay-Cool. The BFF champs make their way to the ring to ‘share’ Melina’s special moment since they don’t have a match at SummerSlam. Not too happy about having her special moment ruined, Melina goes on the attack, taking both of the ‘Flawless Ones’ out. Unfortunately, the numbers games comes into play quickly, as Layla holds Melina in place by the feet, leaving her wide open for a vicious super kick. Alicia tries to get in on the action, but Lay-Cool attacks her as well. Lay-Cool toss Melina to the floor and McCool levels Melina with a vicious knee to the head, ending our SummerSlam Divas segment.
I made no bones about my feelings on the Alicia vs Melina match on Raw last week and my feelings about this match are very similar, but for different reasons:
With the exception of a few odd moments of confusion/miscommunication, the match was pretty much botch-free, but it seemed to be going at a snail’s pace. I notice a lot of the longer Diva matches have this problem. It seems the girls have been given two minute matches for so long, they don’t know what to do when given over five minutes. I found that many times during the match the girls looked lost and had to throw a few forearms to fill the lull.
Another thing that peeved me was how Alicia was absolutely buried in the match. Had the match been a back and forth affair, I might not be too fussed about Melina beating Alicia, but this was not the case. Alicia spent most of this match as a punching bag for Melina. I’m assuming that this feud will continue between Alicia and Melina for at least a few more weeks, but how can you expect the fans to believe Alicia can beat Melina when she’s been completely dominated two matches in a row. I really think this match destroyed any credibility that Alicia had built up in the last few months as the top heel Diva.
Last, but not least, Lay-Cool has wiggled themselves into another Raw match. While their segment was the silver lining for the Divas at SummerSlam, I’m not too keen on mixing storylines across brands outside of events like Survivor Series. But to be fair, with the Smackdown Divas division being as shallow as a shower, I guess Lay-Cool has to feud with someone, right?
All in all, while the match was decent, I don’t think it was PPV match material. I would have preferred if Alicia and Melina skipped SummerSlam and had a few matches on Raw before having this title match. Also, I think that WWE has destroyed any possibility for a continuing feud between these two by putting Melina over so quickly. The Lay-Cool/Melina segment was entertaining however and it planted a lot of seeds for potential fueds. Will it be Melina vs Lay-Cool at Night Of Champions? Will we see Melina and Alicia join forces to take out the flawless Divas on tonight’s Raw? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
Match Rating: 2.5/5
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75 Comments
MAN ALICIA is BEAUTIFUL and SHE LOOKED ABSOLUTELY SO… but, SHE LOOKED DEFEATED BEFORE THE MATCH BEGAN… Wow she looked so hurt to be losing the strap… I hope she will stick with it cause she didnt look too happy
@ozzyv you are right. I was thinking about when she messed uo her leg at New years Revolution. Trish pinned her. I don’t know why I thought she vacated the title. You set me straight lol
“I dont know what some people are talking about but LayCool got a reaction off the crowd, when they came out they got a lot of heat.”
Heat = boos and/or negative chants. Neither one of those things happened.
@chrisp: We aren’t going to agree on this, I heard boos you didnt, simple as.
People are complaining about melina burying alicia fox but melina already buried fox before her return lets rewind about about one year to smackdown where melina pinned fox cleanly on two occasions. Then during melina’s divas title reign she beat fox to retain her title then the match before her injury she beat fox again on superstars. So i counted four times. Then on the night of her in ring return she beat fox again so thats five. And now you guys are saying she buried fox?
As far as laycool, i love them and they did get a reaction despite what you think. And i hope laycool comes out on top in this fued because they are FLAWLESS and thats REAL TALK.
Oh and the match sucked i expected so much more from them but i don’t know why.
Ok so this is kinda reminding me of TNA with Angelina just coming back & winning the title not having to do much ehh. Match wasn’t that good in my opinion, Alicia shouldn’t have lost so quick & easily.
I’m glad to see melina won the title
and I liked that lay-cool appeared
“Alicia was absolutely buried in the match. Had the match been a back and forth affair, I might not be too fussed about Melina beating Alicia, but this was not the case. Alicia spent most of this match as a punching bag for Melina.”
this is exactly how i feel Steven, great write up!!!
also her winning the title her second week back, and the fact her knee clearly isn’t 100% is why i can’t support Melina as a champion right now
“@chrisp: We aren’t going to agree on this, I heard boos you didnt, simple as.”
Okay, fine. The reason I feel so strongly about this one is because this is a “Did this happen or not?” debate rather than a debate that’s a matter of individual taste and preferences like “Was this segment good or not?”
@layglamacool; The reason Alicia got buried so bad at SS was because Alicia was made to be seen as this dominant wrestler who reigned supreme over all the Divas. Melina comes back (from an injury, mind you) and wins the title off of her after two weeks of returning. Not to mention, she won it cleanly. Alicia, who was 100% healthy lost CLEANLY to a woman coming from injury after a two week return! Alicia was buried, like WWE pretty much dug her out a grave and put a tombstone on it. Girl got a straight slap in the face, haha! And, I feel for Alicia, srsly. There’s no way she could come back from this – the entire match was to see who was more supreme and Alicia unfortunately lost that contest. The most Alicia can do is revoke her rematch clause (which, she’ll probably lose to cleanly in less than three minutes) and then head back to Jobersville. It was nice while it lasted, Miss Fox.<3
Melina admitted on twitter that she tweaked her knee, but she’s fine now.
After seeing the match, things were looking fine for Melina until she tweaked her knee and started freaking out, then they had to start making stuff up.
While I think Melina vs Laycool could be interesting, I do think all of this came about because of the Skirt Tiffany Situation. Remember, spoilers were claiming that there was going to be an Eve vs. Alicia vs. Melina three-way feud over the strap. With both Eve and Melina faces right now, the easiest way to start that was with Alicia still champ. On the SD! side, without Tiffany, Laycool would have been stuck in a handicap feud with Kelly. While two-on-one feuds can work, Kelly is a much poorer opponent than Melina for such a thing. I feel like they told Melina, Alicia, and Laycool the change of plans and then just agreed that Laycool’s beat down would take the place of any and all of Alicia’s offensive momentum.
However, I do think Mel vs BFF Champs will be feisty. Melina was already making fun of them as they came to ringside and judging from Melina’s hairpulling curbstomp, she isn’t going to smile and play nice.
Oh… about the Laycool got heat thing… No they didn’t. They should have been booed out of the building for pulling a Kanye West on L.A.’s hometown girl. They instead got a few disapproving grunts. Melina got a good deal of love from the crowd, though.
Did any 1 notice melina has been coping moves from shimmier like the curb stomp,mind trip,and code green.
WWE would have been better off having Vickie come out, garner all the heat in the building (like only she’s really capable of doing now), then announce LayCool as superior or whatever. That’s the only way they would have gotten any semblance of a reaction. The writer’s had to get LayCool on TV somehow since the tag match with Kelly and Tiffany wasn’t happening and this was the unfortunate end result, a segment that nobody cared about that didn’t make a lick of sense since they’re not even on the same show.
@wildsnorlax- While I’m sure Melina watches as much wrestling as she can, many of her moves have been used by wrestlers outside of SHIMMER too.
Well, the match wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t good either. It was a little bit of a hot mess and there was miscommunication here and there. I also dislike that Alicia barely got any offense in and Melina was pushed to the title so soon. I think that these two could have done a good program together and that they would have gotten better in the ring together overtime. Now, no one is going to care about seeing them square off again and Alicia lost all her credibility. LayCool coming out was actually pretty funny and they actually got a pretty good reaction, mixture of cheers and jeers. It was not silent in the least. I like LayCool coming out and possibly feuding with Melina because she has had good matches with both members but I don’t like that it’s pushing all of Raw’s heel Divas to the bottom of the list. Decent Diva stuff for SummerSlam, could have been a lot better and could have been a lot worse.
O.o
Laycool got no reaction at all.
I mean a few grunts, and boos. But that’s not anything.
Sucks for Layla. We know it’s Michelle’s fault.
man the match was awful..melina got two big problems
her stamina and she talks alot with her opponents
alicia like stev said got buried and she appeared as a very weak diva!!
the good thing to me was thier attires….melina’s one was wierd but still nice
and for laycool…i think they got a good reaction
i actually think as soon as people see michelle they dont care shes booked ass superstrong & that she can handle beth & such when she couldnt…i feel for layla who has charisma but isnt allowed to show her moves being with someone who cant get a reaction..
melina i hope not doesnt go down the candice road & come back just to get injured thanks to wwe wanting her back…
even thou i dont like alicia her moves are sloppy she way over sells didnt deserve to lose the title just yet…
i wouldve loved a heel melina come back & take out eve & let them wrestle…
The match structure was pretty good, but Melina’s near re-injury midway through the match really took a lot out of it. The first couple of minutes was very promising, but Melina definitely wasn’t at a hundred percent after she twisted the knee, and the spots she and Alicia tried to pull after that didn’t had as much effect as it could have. The effort was there, though, and despite the fact that her knee is still a little bothersome, Melina proved why she’s the messiah of the Divas division.
And for the LayCool segment… I’m genuinely interested. McCool vs Melina II at Night of Champions? Bring it!
Shame takes Melina 2 weeks to win a title and Gail Kim a year and a half and 0 Titles . . .
:’(
(P.S. Alicia should have Scissor Kicked LayCool at the end when they were on all 4′s ..)
I liked the match, its always nice to see Melina in the ring compared to some of the other diva’s. I hate going by outfits but to me it seemed Melina’s made it look like she was going to win cause Alicia’s was so… blah! Anyway the whole thing just had to be ruined by those two annoying 15 year old girls again. I wish they’d drop the laycool thing and the jokes that make me mute the video, I just dont see it as funny, its lame. I like Mcool and Layla I just would like them more if they didn’t have that cheesy gimmick, AND SPLIT them up for the love of it!
Damn it. I feel like I’ve been ragging on Melina too much lately. But I have to say, I don’t think that that snapmare faceplant/driver (?) she did should be a finisher especially since Maryse does a forward Russian leg sweep that almost looks like that as a regular move. Plus, it doesn’t seem very convincing… just like that side slam that Sarita does or Gail’s Happy Ending or, again, Maryse’s DDT. It’s a cute move but I prefer it as a signature than a finisher.
I tought this match was pretty dull and Melina’s attire was awful…Fortunately,Lay-Cool lifted up the whole Diva segment…I hope they’re gonna win over Melina in an hypothetical feud…It was too soon to give back the title to Melina,in my opinion…And Alicia was so overshadowed!