Minus-Star Match Reviews: Rebel vs. Shelly Martinez – TNA Knockout Knockdown 2016

You know a match is bad when people don’t remember a single thing you did in the ring and only remember something said during the match.

This match between Rebel and Shelly Martinez is widely considered both one of the worst matches in years and one of the funniest. It has been a frequent source of unintended laughter among wrestling fans for almost a decade now. It was so bad that one of the people involved retired from wrestling altogether about a year after it happened.

But was this really that bad, or has its reputation for being unintended comedy softened the negative impact it once had? Read on to find out.

The story

TNA had several shows promoted under the One Night Only banner, which should be the first sign that little thought was being put into this company by the people at the top. One of these shows was built around only showcasing women’s matches and featured several singles matches to determine entrants for a gauntlet match that would determine the Queen of the Knockouts.

The second of these matches featured two of the most underwhelming people TNA had at the time. On one side was Rebel, a 36-year old wrestler with only two years’ worth of experience going into this match. On the other side was Shelly Martinez, f.k.a. Ariel/Salinas, who apparently had been wrestling since 2000 when this match happened.

Ok, so on paper this shouldn’t be too bad; an experienced worker carrying a greenhorn in an under-ten-minute match. How bad could it be?

The match

This match took place on March 17, 2016 but aired on April 22nd. It was rated MINUS FIVE STARS by F4W’s Bryan Alvarez and won the Wrestling Observer’s Worst Match of the Year award for 2016 by a substantial margin.

The match starts with a pose-off in front of the small, dimly-lit crowd. Then they start trash-talking each other and Shelly asks the crowd “am I ugly?” and the crowd pops. Take that however you want. They lock-up and Shelly powers Rebel into a corner. Rebel screams that she wasn’t ready and makes the ref back Shelly off as she removes her jacket. Rebel STALLS forever by folding her jacket which she then throws at Shelly as a distraction. Wait, isn’t that therefore a foreign object/weapon? Shelly ducks a clothesline and lands an arm drag to which commentator Josh Matthews notes “and here we go we’ve got ourselves a wrestling match” with about as much enthusiasm as you’d expect.

Rebel gets a ropebreak to escape an armlock and charges but Shelly lands a drop toehold and goes back to the arm. Shelly switches to a double-arm hold and then covers for a one-count. She elbows Rebel into a corner and chokes Rebel until the ref forcible separates them. Shelly catches Rebel for a forcible splits spot and hits a running kick for another two-count. The ref gets in the way so Rebel pokes Shelly’s eye and hits an ax handle. The match turns into more of a catfight as Matthews says “this is, uh, not pretty”. Well, he’s right about that.

Rebel escapes a double armlock via hairpull and tries to apply an abdominal stretch. Rebel rolls into what looks like a banana split as Shelly screams “MY VAG! MY VAG!!” and then says loud enough to be caught on camera “I SAID MY VAG HURTS!” Notice that no one in the audience is laughing, or even reacting in any way. They’re deader than whatever ghoulish creature Shelly was going for with her make-up.

Rebel foot chokes Shelly in a corner, poses for the fans, and goes for a handspring back elbow. Shelly moves but Rebel still goes for the corner press anyway. Shelly follows with an arm throw, a clothesline, a chop, and some light throws. Shelly runs at Rebel for…something…maybe a headscissor?…only to stumble downward and leave Rebel carrying dead weight.

Shelly manages to “throw” Rebel over and lands a DDT which sends Rebel to the floor. Shelly gets a big running start and goes for a dive. She gets some speed up according to Matthews (what planet is he on right now?) but not enough as she gets caught upside down in the ropes. One guy in the crowd can be seen putting his hands on the sides of his head, aghast at what he’s seeing and I can’t blame him at all. Rebel basically frees Shelly from her upside down trap, rolls her over in the ring, and pins her for a three-count to end whatever you want to call this.

Winner after 6:03: Rebel

Review

Unlike the Jenna Morasca/Sharmell which was simply pitiful and embarrassing to watch unfold, this match IS something you can laugh at. It wasn’t quite on the level of ‘so bad it’s good’ because it was still put together terribly. Both women had some experience and put some effort into this but the end result was still really bad thanks to clumsy movement, clichéd ideas, and a conclusion so bad that there was better storytelling in the audience than in the ring.

Perhaps they were aware of their own limitations so they tried to keep things basic but they couldn’t even muster that much. The first half had plenty of stalling and light offense. It was clear that they had zero chemistry and struggled to come up with anything on the spot in the event something went awry. Then things got even worse during the second half. Rebel tried an abdominal stretch that looked hideous and like it was applied incorrectly. Then she went into a split and that’s when Shelly made her famous comments.

That moment overshadows everything to do with this match. It was hysterical. It was so absurd and out of nowhere. It was the only comedic silver lining in an otherwise unmitigated trainwreck. It probably inspired Nia Jax to scream “MY HOLE” years later hoping to conjure up Shelly’s unintended comedic genius.

But in my opinion Shelly screaming about her vagina isn’t as funny as the crowd’s reactions. You can see some of them in the wide shots as Shelly ends up trapped in the ropes. Several audience members’ reactions capture the epic failure of this match better than any words on this site ever could. One guy didn’t know if he should stop clapping or continue out of instinctual politeness. One guy started cosplaying as Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The crowd was either dead or stunned silent at how something like this could be greenlit to be taped. So many things went wrong here that it can’t be anything but pure unintentional comedy.

Final Rating: -**

This is definitely a bad match and in some ways it’s worse than the standard-bearer for awful women’s matches in Jenna versus Sharmell. That match was the absolute nadir because one person had no training whatsoever and so she and the people that approved that match should be called out for allowing such a thing to happen. This one featured people with actual experience and they just happened to have a really bad night. And because these two were “trained” professionals there was an expectation of at least some basic quality. So for them to shit the bed this badly is, to some people, worse than Jenna/Sharmell because only one of those people was qualified to be in the ring.

But while the former match didn’t have anything redeemable about it, you can laugh at this one and no one would blame you for doing so. So at the very least this is ten minutes of (unintentional) comedy that can help someone having a bad day feel the least bit better about themselves.