10 Awesome Things You Don't Remember About WWE's Ruthless Aggression Era

9. The Devil You Know

WWE.com

When WWE relaunched ECW as their C-branded show on SyFy in June 2006, they had to work with the remit of the channel the show was on, and duly created a €˜vampire€™ character to satisfy that outlandish genre fetish.

Well, given that WWE has made a megastar out of a giant undead zombie wizard for a quarter of a century now, it€™s not as odd a decision as you€™d think.

Accompanying Kevin Thorn (aka Kevin Fertig, the former Mordecai from SmackDown in 2004) was his valet Ariel, supposedly a vampire tarot reader. The two would pair up on ECW for a year until Ariel€™s release in July 2007, which came about due to a backstage misunderstanding with Batista.

What a waste of talent this was, given the real-life Shelly Martinez€™ commitment to the role she€™d been handed.

To get Thorn over, Martinez displayed a focus on the €˜Ariel€™ character that bordered on method acting. Given that outré wrestling gimmicks like theirs require nothing less than Undertaker/Kane levels of complete investment to pull them off, she was instrumental in providing the charisma-free Fertig with colour and depth.

He had the tendency to look like a giant sulky child instead of an intimidating, dread vampire lord, which would have been a kayfabe-killer had Ariel not stepped up her game.

Indeed, it can be argued that prior to her release, Ariel was more over than Thorn was, and she wasn€™t shy about getting her hands dirty, either, throwing herself into every aspect of a heel manager€™s job with gusto.

WWE are constantly looking for stars that attract the lucrative Hispanic demographic, so it€™s hard not to see this as a missed opportunity on the WWE€™s part. Had the company not chosen to back Big Dave over Shelly Martinez in a he-said-she-said nine years ago, who knows where her career might be now?

Remember, this is how Trish Stratus started, and she€™s now a record-setting Women's Champion, a wrestling icon and a WWE Hall Of Famer.

Contributor
Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.