As seen Monday night on Raw, Eva Marie made her televised wrestling debut as she and fellow Total Divas JoJo and Natalya defeated Alicia Fox, Aksana and Rosa Mendes in a Six-Diva Tag Team Match. The 29-year-old’s performance drew negative reviews online, as her inexperience was put on display before millions of viewers (prior to the match, she had only wrestled before a live crowd once, a non-televised tag team bout at SummerSlam Axxess in August). It has since come out that this reaction was sought within WWE as she was purposely set up to fail by members of management.
Dave Meltzer claimed on F4WOnline.com’s Wrestling Observer Radio that WWE officials wanted to knock the confident Californian down a few pegs, since they feel she has an undeserved ego and doesn’t realize how much she has to learn as a performer. Therefore, they had her sink on national television in hopes of making her humble.
This is not the first time in which Eva Marie, who F4WOnline.com reported in August as being “passionately hated” by some of her co-workers, was pranked in an inside manner.
In a segment filmed backstage at a spring Raw show for the August 4 episode of E! Total Divas, she was led to believe by company personnel that she had committed a wrongful act and that an infuriated Stephanie McMahon wanted to confront her over the matter (on the episode, the meeting was depicted as stemming from Eva Marie lying about her background in order to audition to be Fandango’s dancer, which was a fabricated storyline). During the blurred reality segment, McMahon threatened to fire her if she embarrassed the company again with her conduct. Eva Marie legitimately cried during the meeting, as she was not aware that the situation was orchestrated and that McMahon was fooling around with her through her character persona.
