WWE Gimmicks That FAILED The HARDEST Every Year (1985-2025)
17. Santina Marella (2009)
It shouldn't be lost on anyone that Santino Marella dressed up as his kayfabe sister Santina won a women's division showcase at WrestleMania XXV. The sole women's match on the entire pay-per-view ended with the wig-wearing Marella weeping tears of joy as Candice Michelle put a tiara on him. That kinda sums up WWE's attitude towards female wrestling in 2009.
The torture didn't stop there.
Santina hung around for an alarming stretch of time, and even appeared in further PPV matches against Beth Phoenix and the disjointed team of Vickie and Chavo Guerrero. The latter 'Hog Pen' handicap effort was a miserable waste of time on a show people at home paid good money to see. It's just as well Edge and Jeff Hardy put on a banger in a main event ladder bout.
The Santina fascination was a one note joke that should've been kept far, far away from the 'Mania Battle Royal. Legends like Sunny were roundly ignored so the gag could play out, and talent like Phoenix, Natalya, Molly Holly, Melina, Maryse, Victoria and many more played background noise to Marella's nonsense.
You've got to give it up for Santino. He was funny on his day, but the Santina spin off was a wicked slap in the face to a division that fought for scraps in a male-dominated industry. The women deserved a lot better than missing out on PPV payoffs so Marella could pull double duty as his monobrowed self and "his twin sister" (who had one of the most deliberately annoying voices ever, by the way).