6 Wrestling Moments That Had A Major Long-Term Impact

There can't be many, if any, instances of wrestling articles which include both Mitsuharu Misawa and Melina within their ambit. Relatively talented though the 'Paparazzi Princess' was during a time when the majority of her colleagues had poorer wrestling fundamentals than Ric Flair's proverbial mop, it's difficult to put her in the same category as the Standard Bearer for Future Generations. Nevertheless, an act of rarely seen ingenuity in the era's parlous Divas division in 2010 proved that she too, if not walked along, at least stepped on the King's Road.

At Night of Champions 2009, MNM's former valet turned perennial women's champ Melina challenged for Michelle McCool's still relatively respectable version of the strap. Naïvely, she turned her back on the incumbent during her typically bendy entrance routine, allowing the All-American Diva to blindside her with a devastating dropkick mid-splits. Having gave away the initiative, the challenger came up short in just six and a half minutes.

She wouldn't make the same mistake twice. When the pair collided at the same event a year on to unify Melina's decidedly less respectable 'butterfly belt' with McCool's bifurcated besties bling, the 'Barracuda' lured the opposition into her jaws. Once more whilst performing her entrance routine, McCool made a quick-witted bid to marry boot to face. Only this time, Melina had outsmarted her, jumping up at the last moment and sending her opposite number flying through the ropes.

That said, she still lost - though she did last twenty seconds longer than the previous effort.