10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Melina

4. Kidnapping Trish Stratus

There are a lot of ways to earn oneself a championship opportunity in WWE. The most popular route is to pin the champion in a non-title match. If the commentator screams 'SO AND SO HAS PINNED THE (INSERT TITLE)', even better, you're almost guaranteed a shot on the next pay-per-view. Alternatively, you can get title shots by attacking friends of the champion, building up a head of steam with a run of victories, or having your cronies kidnap the champion and tie her to a chair in the basement.

The latter was Melina's route to a championship match against then-Women's Champion Trish Stratus, way back in late 2005. The challenger had Nitro and Mercury (hooded, no less) kidnap Trish from ringside, dragging her backstage in a visual that hasn't aged well at all. This all led to Melina making a fairly humdrum challenge backstage, the sort of thing that could have been done in a normal in-ring segment.

The title match happened at Survivor Series and saw Trish come out on top, with Melina eventually settling as the third most important person in the match, behind the champion and her new superfan; Mickie James.

Kidnapping women isn't something the world needs to be reminded of, fictional or not.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.