Most people who were watching the Diva Battle Royal on Monday Night Raw will have likely missed the laughably speedy exits of divas Gail Kim and Melina. Melina is eliminated within about 15 seconds, after what looks like bending down to tie her shoelaces. Gail, meanwhile, can be seen scrapping with Alicia Fox before, oddly, rolling out of the ring and appearing to eliminate herself about 20 seconds into the match.
Was there a story behind both women's embarrassingly short in-ring time? Almost certainly. On The August 2nd Wrestling Observer Live, Dave Meltzer noted the quick and limited involvement of Melina and Gail and explained it was likely a buriel for both women's behaviour on Twitter. Melina's behaviour on Twitter is well-known to most fans by now, but Gail hasn't been doing herself any favours either. In fact, the Canadian diva has been making several critical comments about the lack of focus on women's wrestling in WWE and the creative team's misuse of her and other divas. In early and mid July she posted the following comments on her twitter:
"Sometimes I don't realize how long I haven't been on RAW bc I still wrestle on superstars...which I love bc I get to WRESTLE for longer than 3 min and actually have singles matches! Hopefully soon...:)))"
"Thank u! The response to my superstars match has been unbelievable and it was TRULY a dream come true. Imagine if we were given a storyline or some more time behind it! Sigh"
She also later complained about WWE's common practice of having 8 woman tag matches but only ever letting two women (one of whom is usually Rosa Mendes) in the ring for about two minutes. While these criticisms may seem quite mild (and weren't even particularly bad when you consider what CM Punk has been given permission to say in the past on-air about the company) considering how uptight and sensitive WWE creative are about criticism, it was not a wise move. Indeed, WWE have a habit of spitefully punishing performers over what they perceive to be any type of infraction. Meltzer and Alvarez criticised both women for this and suggested most superstars just use their twitters to lavish praise on the company and croon about how they have "their dream job" (and how great is is to put "smiles on children's faces", of course) For the record, Melina didn't get much better treatment: aside for her embarrassing elimination this week, Michael Cole also called her a "Whackjob" on-air last week, a comment which, by the way, had nothing whatsoever to do with the storyline or anything going on on-screen and was likely a reflection of how many in management feel about her right now.
Was there a story behind Gail rolling out of the ring and storming off? Was it some sort of angle? If so, what could the angle possibly be? She's not involved in any real feud's right now and the battle royale seemed to exist solely to get the Kelly and Beth Phoenix angle over. If it was scripted, it was a very odd thing for WWE to do. The plot thickened when she was asked by one of her followers, "What happened? Didid you roll out of the ring on purposed?", Gail curtly responded: "Yes." Then later she said of the self-elimination: "I was just checking to see if anyone was paying attention." Eh, she may have had a point: only JR seemed to pick up on it. And it wouldn't shock me if most in management didn't even pick up on it till she said something on her twitter account. Gail has continued to insist her actions in the battle royale were a protest and not unprofessional, saying:
"also on the contrary, I wasn't being a mark 4 myself I was being a good employee when ur told to get out of the ring in less than a min.I just did it the fastest way possible:)so really I saved some time
As I noted, this seems to very extremely unlikely to be a shoot-angle of sorts. I'm not ruling it out entirely, but what would be the point? It makes no sense. So it seems she was, like Meltzer suggested and she has seemingly confirmed, punished for her recent complaints about the state of the division and instructed to get out of the ring early by WWE brass. In responde she simply eliminated herself and walked off.
Assuming we do believe Gail's version, this is a rather serious matter. An employee "going into business for themselves" and eliminating themselves (thereby exposing the business and showing the whole thing to be massively fake) is not an infraction that can go ignored by WWE. If what she is saying is true, I'd be stunned if she wasn't punished severely in some manner or other. Frankly, Gail may have been better not saying anything, otherwise, like she says, there's a very good chance people in WWE wouldn't have picked up on it.
So, what are Gail's motives? Well, she's 34 years old now (which is, like, 50 in diva years) and her career is clearly going nowhere. She is also engaged to celebrity chef Robert Irvine and has a life planned after wrestling, it seems. Assuming she's saved up her money, she shouldn't need to worry about having to crawl back to TNA if WWE fire her, either. Maybe she feels at this point she has nothing to lose. She could be right.