1. Ariel Was Fired After Backstage Confrontation With Batista
Batista is a notorious ladies man and has been romantically linked to a plethora of WWE divas. Statistically, if you were a WWE diva when Batista was roaming the locker room back in the day, odds were that you were going to become another conquest of The Animal. But that's not to say he got along with all of WWE's female talent. One woman whom he had a particularly rocky relationship with was Shelly 'Ariel' Martinez, who played Kevin Thorn's vampiric valet on the ECW brand. Martinez stuck up for her friend Melina, whom Batista was dating and had verbally abused backstage at a live event in May. This did not sit well with Big Dave, who proceeded to launch a torrent of abuse at Martinez. To her credit, she stood her ground and argued back. Since WWE is basically like high school and Batista was the star quarterback, this was not a good move politically. Batista is good friends with Triple H, who is married to Stephanie McMahon, who at that point had the ability to fire people. Martinez was let go but let the reason why be known in interviews. As she explained to the VOC Nation in 2013:
Batista and I had an aggressive conversation backstage and he said some things that were unnecessary and uncalled for. If it was outside of wrestling, Im pretty sure it could have been a legal problem for both Batista and WWE. But this is wrestling, and its a mans business, so I fired back and they fired me. I was just a vampire girl in the fake ECW; he was Batista, and they wanted to accommodate him.
The two did have a Twitter truce in 2011, with Batista blaming the hostile WWE environment for their problems. They are now friends and have been photographed hanging out together in recent years. Still, it was poor form for WWE to fire Martinez over it (although it must be said they didn't think she had the proper 'WWE diva look' and was a Paul Heyman girl, which were also working against her).