Ashley Massaro / YMMV

Awesome Moments:
- She got one during the talent round of the Diva Search - by insisting that she was here to wrestle. She performed a monkey flip on Christy Hemme.
  "This ain't American Idol. This is WWE!"
- Her first night on RAW after winning the Diva Search she is inserted into a match with Victoria by Torrie Wilson and Candice Michelle. Not only does she hold her own on the mic, but she drops Torrie and Candice and goes right after Victoria with no hesitation. She lost the match in seconds, but it was still an impressive showing from a green rookie.
Awesome Music:
- Her first entrance theme was "Be Yourself" by Audioslave and made for a nice feel-good track.
- Her last entrance theme "Light a Fire" was an energetic pop-rock tune. She also got pyro during her entrance with the song, something very few WWE women's wrestlers got.
Base-Breaking Character: These days opinions on Ashley are divided into two categories; those who felt she had potential when she debuted and could have evolved into a good wrestler if she had been trained properly - a claim that is supported by the likes of Michelle McCool, Eve Torres, Layla and many others evolving in their training. And the other set feels she was useless and a lost cause from the beginning.
Best Known for the Fanservice: Aside from her Playboy cover getting her a WrestleMania match, what else is she remembered for?
Condemned by History: As noted below, she was very popular when she was first introduced. She won the third (2005) Diva Search easily by fan votes and was liked for her unique look - as well as expressing a desire to wrestle. In her initial months, she was held up as a Diva with lots of potential. Things went downhill around the time she was chosen to pose for Playboy. After a disastrous match at WrestleMania 23, as well as fellow Divas such as Michelle McCool, Layla, Candice Michelle and Kelly Kelly putting work in to become better wrestlers, fans disappeared from Ashley's side. While she attempted to make a comeback on the indies, she eventually got a reputation for no-showing events she was advertised for. After eight years she did start making her independent circuit dates, but she's still remembered as a representation of everything that was wrong with WWE's Divas division in the post Lita and Trish Stratus era. Although her death mitigated some of it.
Creator's Pet: She was promoted as the top Face of SmackDown despite her inexperience in the ring - over someone like Jillian Hall who could go in the ring. In their feud with Kristal Marshall and Michelle McCool, Jillian was the clear number two. She also got a WrestleMania match cutting off Mickie James's momentum just after she and Melina had the first women's Falls Count Anywhere match in WWE.
Critic-Proof: Ashley was pretty over while she was in WWE, and was actually put with London and Kendrick in the hopes of getting them over. Virtually any wrestling critic despised her to no end.
Ensemble Dark Horse: She was a consistent crowd favorite throughout the entire 2005 Diva Search.
Fan Nickname: 'Trashley' for her Good Bad Girl character.
Fetish Retardant: She had so much plastic surgery and lost so much weight that she began looking very off-putting by the time she was released. Before her 2019 suicide, she had began to regain her natural beauty.
Harsher in Hindsight
- Her disastrous matches can become harsher to watch with the knowledge that she literally had no idea what she was doing. She claims she showed up to TV in her second week and was told she had a match - when she'd never wrestled before in her life. Her mediocre match against Melina for the title happened while she had a broken foot too.
- The fact she is unfairly blamed for tanking Raw/WWE's women's division becomes bitterly ironic when one considers that she was popular initially because fans thought she would be able to do some damage control for the division, which had already lost most of its prestige before the 2005 Diva Search even started. Massaro was aware fans wanted wrestling back but simply wasn't ready to wrestle a match, and while a couple of wrestlers were interested in getting her there, WWE as a whole wasn't and was fine letting Massaro embarrass and injure herself week after week.
- Her entire WWE career gets even harsher in light of the allegations^note that she was raped while on tour and WWE covered it up.
- The fact that her entrance theme was "Be Yourself" by Audioslave because both she and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell were Driven to Suicide.
Memetic Loser: You'd be hard-pressed to find a single Smart Mark or diva fan that is a fan of hers and doesn't blame her for kick starting the decline in women's wrestling. Even limiting women's wrestling to "WWE", Massaro can't even be called a catalyst, as the first two major blows to the women's division she "competed" in happened a year before Massaro had been signed. She seems to get much of the blame mostly due to how hard she was pushed and how little training she had.
Never Live It Down: The escort story is still talked about to this day. If her failed in-ring career isn't mentioned when discussing her, the escort scandal will be.
Older Than They Think: Ashley appeared in Playboy twice before going to WWE, once in 2003 and again in 2004. Though she was using a pseudonym (Ryan MacKenzie) at the time, looked much different, and wasn't the cover girl.
Smurfette Breakout: She was put as the manager of Paul London and Brian Kendrick. Ashley was eventually chosen as a Playboy covergirl and pushed as a title contender... only for real life issues to derail that.
Vindicated by History: While she was over with live crowds, smarks and Diva fans despised her due to her lack of in-ring ability. The stance has softened in years, and especially after her interview where she revealed she was never trained to wrestle properly. There was some excitement when it was announced she would make an in-ring return after she said she went through rigorous training. And when she did numerous reports of missed indie dates did not follow, as had with her first "return", giving fans hope she could be relied on in more ways than one. After her death, there has been an outpouring of grief from her fans and fellow wrestlers and even from her detractors as they acknowledged that while she wasn't good in the ring while she was with WWE, she had a unique look and charisma and was a great player in the Trish Stratus vs. Mickie James feud. Wrestlers Jamie Senagal and Toni Storm have stated that Ashley was a big influence on them as well.
The Woobie:
- Behind the scenes. The woman actually did want to wrestle, but she was never trained properly. Years after her WWE career, she revealed she had only ever been trained on a per-match basis.^note Because of this, she had about five injuries during her three years with the company.
- So, so much worse after it emerged that Ashley's death was a case of suicide by hanging, and afterwards it emerged that she'd left a sworn affidavit with her lawyer testifying that, during a goodwill tour of US military bases in Kuwait in 2007, she'd been drugged and raped by a military doctor, with her bosses at WWE advising her not to report it. If true, it casts an even darker pall over her entire WWE career.

YMMV / Ashley Massaro

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