Trish Stratus recalls what happened and gives a fresher take on the situation.
WWE Hall Of Famer Trish Stratus has had many notable moments throughout her years in professional wrestling including multiple WWE Women's Championship victories, magazine covers and the aforementioned Hall Of Fame induction. Trish has had the opportunity to compete at WrestleManias and at WrestleMania XXVIII, she joined forces with former IMPACT World Champion Johnny Impact who also is known as John Morrison and they teamed with Jersey Shore star Snooki and defeated Dolph Ziggler, Michelle McCool and Layla.
All parties involved have respectively recounted when John Morrison decided to stand opposite of Trish Stratus after their victory and gave her what has been described as the 'cold shoulder'. Trish reflected on that memory again when she sat down with Lilian Garcia for a new edition of the 'Chasing Glory' podcast and reiterated that she did not return to WWE during that time to take a spot from anyone which was the reported basis of Morrison's issue with Stratus.
“So there’s like an internet thing -- the famous John Morrison/Trish Stratus incident… it’s called the famous cold shoulder incident. It was from RAW actually. So we had the WrestleMania match with Snooki and LayCool and Dolph Ziggler, and I guess it was on RAW and we won the match, we were raising our hands and I went to go raise his hand and he like threw my hand off or gave me a brush and went on the other side of Snooki and I was like, ‘Okay, that was on live television’ and it was a big thing and we had a little conversation in the back. Well it wasn’t a little conversation. We were passionately talking about it and [I said], ‘You just stole a moment from a performance. Whatever you feel about me -- maybe you feel like you’re not cool with me which is fine, I don’t mind but, we’re performing and tonight we’re partners and the crowd was excited about us as a team, as a partnership and you’ve taken that moment from the fans.' It’s like, for what? And you couldn’t just wait five seconds later?" Trish questioned, "I’m gone tomorrow. I’m not even around, and then he went into this whole thing and said, ‘Well you’ve taken a spot from another superstar by being here’ and I was like, ‘Nope, I have not taken a spot from someone. I was assigned this, I’m on the show Tough Enough that airs after this and they brought me back for that.’”
The incident led to Trish Stratus and Melina not speaking for years. After five or six years went by, Melina and Trish reconnected and with the unfortunate passing of Ashley Massaro, it allowed for Stratus and Melina to connect on a deeper level through their respective relationships with Massaro.
“So it got a lot of big buzz and eventually he got released and everyone thought it was because of that accident but who knows, whatever, but a lot of it, there was this backstory that, they were mad because that was his girlfriend [Melina] and I was taking up his girlfriend's spot and she really had nothing to do about this." Trish explained. "So we haven’t talked for years and we were fine before this incident and we would chat here and there and then we just didn’t talk and I never chatted with her, she never talked to me and it was just this quiet thing, life goes on and next thing you know, five years have gone by, six years have gone by and we reached out a couple times on Twitter, DM’d each other here and there and when this group thing came, we just said this is a chance for us to chat and we finally connected and we had a really wonderful conversation and in other words, the bottom line was, ‘Hey we’re cool right? Yeah, there was no heat ever’, and I was doing my best whenever someone was like, ‘Oh I love this underrated match between Trish and Melina’ and I’d be like, ‘I loved working with her, great girl’ because I wanted her to see that and know, I love her, I loved working with her. I thought we had like a really small feud but, it was great. It was really, really good for what it was. Memorable and I loved working with her so, I love her as a friend, she came to my studio, came to my house before.” Trish said.
Trish Stratus returned to WWE in the Fall of 2018 on the lead up to WWE's first-ever all-women's pay-per-view Evolution and to listen to Fightful's review podcast of Evolution, click here.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the 'Chasing Glory' podcast with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
