Shelly “Ariel” Martinez’s release was a bit of a surprise to most since she was on television weekly. The main reason given for her release was that the people making the decisions didn’t think she had “the right look,” which is kind of a nice way of saying that she wasn’t pretty enough in the eyes of one Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
McMahon was negative on using her from the start because she didn’t have the typical model look that he likes. However, Paul Heyman sold him on her because she did a good job playing her gimmick while she was in Ohio Valley Wresling. When Heyman left, she lost her biggest supporter, although she managed to stick around for several more months. Also, Vince doesn’t understand “goth” characters, so that didn’t help her cause. However, it looks like Kevin Thorn will be staying on the roster in his role, which kind of makes this release all the more surprising.
Stephanie McMahon’s rise to power caused all the marginal talent to be re-evaluated, and that’s why a bunch of talent were let go in a matter of days. Also, she wasn’t warm to any idea that originally came from Paul Heyman, Stephanie’s arch nemesis. So well, that definitely didn’t help Ariel’s cause either.
There were some reports last week that Ariel’s release was due to an incident with Batista at the SmackDown tapings in Baltimore. Sources saying that they had an argument, but she wasn’t released due to the specific incident, although it probably didn’t help matters.
The deal with Batista is that he’s the “starting quarterback on the football team” and WWE consists of a bunch of people who are still living in high school. Batista is a star, gets tons of women while on the road, and is very outspoken at times, especially at some of the women on the roster. Most of the women on the roster don’t say anything back to him, but in the WWE environment, it doesn’t matter who is right or who is wrong whenever a conflict may arise, all that matters is who is higher up on the totem pole. In Martinez’s case, the story goes that Batista tried to pull something on her, and she would have nothing of it. She made some comments back to Batista, which probably was a bad move politically. In the WWE environment, he’s seen as a big star, and she’s just seen as easily replaceable eye candy.
