Fumbles of Wrestling: Ashley Massaro
Posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 by Scot Santoski
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Arguably one of the worst Divas ever…except amongst her fan. Yes, you. You know who you are.
Yanno what the hardest part is about these articles? Convincing your friends how close to being right you can get. Originally, I posted FoW as a blog under ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com for a good year before coming to GamingRing. In that time I’ve learned some people will defend most Fumbles until they’re blue in the face, agree, or just plain out disagree because at some point they were a fan and refuse to believe anyone can actually hate such a wrestler. This is especially worst when it comes to the women of wrestling. Sure, I hadn’t written much on women as Fumbles, but it’s amazing how highly these girls get praised moreso than the guys. With the men it’s more than likely to see comments that read “Yanno what, I agree”, but with women you’re going to hear silly things like “MICKIE JAMES IS NOT FAT” or “SHE IS NOT A TRANNY”. I’ve never discovered why this is, but I’m about to see how the GR fanbase reacts when I take a look at Ashley Massaro.
Now…to be fair, when I first saw her on the 2005 Diva Search, I admit I was baited into her as well. She had a more original look to her than most of the selected Divas in that ring, and she seemingly had a hook as well: She wanted to actually wrestle, something that more often than not gets overlooked in the WWE environment. She did things like hit a monkey flip on former Diva Search winner Christy Hemme, gave out her phone number to collect fan response, and eventually won the contest, showing interest in becoming a better wrestler. but see, there’s a difference between ’showing interest’ and ‘actually getting better’. When she was in the ring, her wrestling didn’t improve too much, and yet she was a top-tier to the Raw roster. Well, this was mostly because there weren’t many women on the roster at the time in general. Torrie Wilson and Candice Michelle would be traded Kiebler and Christy right after the competition, and would attack Ashley for weeks, I think possibly because she was able to make it into the company so easily. For the record, Candice was another Diva search reject, who was welcomed back after her infamous GoDaddy Superbowl commercials. And Torrie Wilson started off as a pretty face in WCW that made her into a Playboy cover girl during her time in WWE. Um, pots? Yeah. You just called the kettle black. So what was the payoff on these attacks? Well, given Ashley was the sole face on Raw, it was time for Trish Stratus and the Women’s Championship to return from a long hiatus after being squashed under the big love machine known as Viscera (Now there’s a guy with no luck…). So it would go for the longest time that Trish and Ashley would win all sorts of matches against the two and the crazy break-dancing chick Victoria. And things would change when Mickie James stepped onto the scene. Originally, Mickie was a Trish obsessed fan, and would do everything she could to be at Trish’s side, even help her out in a match. And see her naked. And kiss her under the mistletoe. But at least it made for some interesting storytelling, although you’re asking why I trailed off about Ashley and onto Mickie. Well, Ashley did play some part in this feud, although it wasn’t much outside of a few matches against Mickie where Trish would play referee (literally). Eventually Mickie got so sick of her she tied her to a chair and left her in the ring for Trish to save her. In the midst of this feud, Ashley would suffer the first of many injuries that would hinder her favoritism with the fans, but sadly not her push. She would be moved to Smackdown and put into many tag matches with the longest reigning WWE Tag Team Champions this millenium, Paul London & Brian Kendrick, often going against Michelle McCool and some tag team that hardly anyone would remember. She’d also take the newly-turned Jillian Hall under her wing and tutor her as a wrestler…despite Jillian having more time learning to be a wrestler than Ashley ever did. Also, I need to mention how overplayed Ashley’s finisher was, which was known as the Starstruck. It was apparently so awe-defying that Michael Cole once said he’d “never seen anything like it”. This finisher was, of course, a second rope elbow drop. Yanno, that move we’d seen Shawn Michaels and Randy Savage use several times from the TOP ROPE? How a second rope elbow drop is more a finisher than a top rope one is anyone’s guess, but the fact that it’s played out as her finisher, despite girls like Lita and Molly Holly using their own flipping maneuvers from the top rope? That’s just terrible. To me, it just says that this woman is too afraid to go all the way to the top. It makes me sick. Sadly, thanks in part to her Diva search status and how high WWE was towards her at the time, she was signed onto do a shoot for WWE’s annual Playboy issue to promote Wrestlemania. In years prior, the unveiling of the Playboy cover was simply splashed on the screen for a few seconds, shilled by every WWE announce team, and given a segment on Raw or Smackdown to unveil the cover. In the case of Ashley, she was given a pyro entrance, and her Playboy cover was unscrolled from the Titantron, and left up for the duration of her time out in the ring. It was like having a female John Cena shoved down your throat. But done creatively. Even worse was that to promote Ashley even MORE as having her fifteen minutes of fame was that a Diva Talent contest was made and aired on PPV. Because THAT’S the way to waste forty bucks, right? Not like anyone cared about matches or stuff like that! Although those who didn’t buy the PPV missed out on seeing Ashley’s tatas. And those of us that heard about this debacle were glad they didn’t order the PPV. See…such talents would include Kelly Kelly, Leyla, and…that other chick…dancing, and Jillian Hall trying to sing. But at least they were actual talents. Compare this to Ashley, who just walked out onto the ramp, and showed off her toothpick body to the world, and was immediately declared the winner. But…how? All she did was tease fans and show off her body. That’s not a talent. No, you know what? I think she DID show off her talent backstage, but since the WWE didn’t want to hear angry mothers and the FCC complain, they didn’t show the footage and told Ashley to just walk out there to show off her toothpick body while they zipped their pants up. And I know people are thinking, “but Ragnal, that’s pretty sexist, don’t you think?” Sure, but if you look at this:
Would you deem it sexist? I hope not. Seriously, THIS was all she did to win a talent competition. That’s pretty pathetic on the judge’s part AND her part. Even sadder, though, was that this sort of publicity and push would immediately make Ashley the number one contender for the Women’s title. Now, right here I just want to say I’m glad out of all the Playboy girls in WWE, only three ever held the Women’s title. If they all did, well, that’s a pretty low standard for a champion, right? So, the Women’s champion at the time was Melina, a woman who was usually followed by a paparazzi in her entrance (I’m not even making this up), who was mad at the publicity Ashley was getting out of all this. Well, at least they found a way to work it all together, right? Regardless of the storyline heading in, and the fact they thought getting all the girls in the company to act as “Lumberjills” was a good idea, the match was deemed awful in the first place, and was placed in the later part of the Wrestlemania card so that people could take a piss before the main event. And no, I’m not joking. I honestly believe that most wrestling promoters will do something like that on purpose. Think about it; why was the Akebono/Big Show match the second-to-last match on Wrestlemania 21’s card? So fans could leave, take a piss from all the soda they drank, and head back to their seats to ask themselves “Holy crap, how much longer is this going to TAKE?” But back to the point, the match was just a load of trash, it was kept short, and involved a major brawl of every Diva out there, which was enough time for everyone to get back to their seats and enjoy the main event. But hey, the match wasn’t the worst of the night at least; that belongs to a match between Great Khali and Kane, who were trying to emulate the Hulk Hogan/Andre match from twenty years prior.  Ashley Massaro, post-op So after this, what became of Ashley? Well, I’d like to say “not much”, but sadly, a lot did while she was with WWE. First, herself and a bunch of the Divas were featured in a Timbaland video (This was that song played during one of those Verizon commercials, that’s all I know about it) and she was the female lead for Rev Theory’s video for “Hell Yeah” (Which I admit the song’s become a recent favorite. Let’s see how long that lasts.) Also, most notably, after Vince McMahon lost the ECW championship (As explained in the Lashley article) he went a bit nutso and suspended Ashley for…spilling coffee on Vince. Like I said, he was nuts. So what was the real reason for this suspension? So Ashley could participate on Survivor. And I remember asking at first, “What, was the quarter grand not enough money?” Here’s a woman that’s already somewhat famous, and she’s planning to partake on the show that’s the prime reason reality shows even pollute the Nielsen ratings to get a whole million dollars? Talk about lowering your standards & practices. God awful joke aside, I don’t know much about what went on here since I loathe the show in general anyways, just that she was annoying her tribe and was voted off the second episode. Wait, the SECOND episode? Wow. I’m surprised she lasted THAT long. So back to the ring went Ashley, who for the rest of her career would be a mouthpiece for the face Divas. Oh yeah, and she’d be back in Wrestlemania 24 to wrestle in ANOTHER match involving Playboy models. The funny thing is, she wasn’t supposed to be there originally. She replaced Candice Michelle (who’s yet another Playboy model) because Candice was stupid enough to agree to a risky spot that she was not yet ready to take on. So it was Ashley and Maria vs. Melina and Beth Phoenix in a tag team Lumberjill match. So…not much different here than last year. Well, aside from Snoop Dogg being at the ring for some reason, but I’m not going to go into that. I’d rather not. So FINALLY after all this, Ashley would do little else, and eventually leave wrestling due to her daughter being sick. Orrrrr so she’d let you think… Just some time prior to Ashley’s leave, a report came up in a Rolling Stone magazine that there was a prostitution sting going on, and Ashley’s name came up as a former employee of the agency, and she on her Myspace told fans not to believe it one bit. And last I checked, Rolling Stone still went with this. My thought? She left WWE to keep herself under the radar for this, and thought she’d get back there pretty quickly months later. Evidence comes in the form of a Myspace post saying she would be back in WWE by Summerslam 2008. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened. And we as wrestling fans are all the happier. (Editors Note: Excuse me I happen to be a fan of Miss Ashley Massaro. I had the pleasure of interviewing her at Wrestlemania 24. Mike) If you would like to discuss this article with over 40,000 other registered members feel free to do so by joining the Gamingring.com forums. Its fast, free and easy to do so.
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