Wrestling / Trish Stratus

"Congratulations Trish, there was never anyone any better!"

—Jim Ross, upon Stratus' victory during her first retirement match

A former fitness model, Trish Stratus (real name: Patricia Anne Stratigeas; born on December 18, 1975 in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada) has wrestled for WWE from the early 2000s. She was a seven-time WWE Women's Champion and a one-time WWE Hardcore Champion. She was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013. After making a number of short and one-off appearances for WWE after her initial retirement from full-time competition in 2006, she officially returned to active competition in 2022, being drafted to RAW in the 2023 draft.

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"Stratusfying Tropes":

• Action Girl: She even did the occasional hardcore match, and took some sick bumps.
• Alpha Bitch: Around 2004 she steadily started to really control the division, and rallied other heel Divas around her - briefly having Jazz, Molly Holly and Gail Kim as something of a Girl Posse. This time did not last too long, as she was sidelined with an injury and was a face again when she returned.
• Amazonian Beauty: Starting out as a fitness model is very obvious. This was downplayed after her 2005 injury - as she noted years later - that taking up yoga caused her to lose a lot of bulk. Towards the end of her run she was more slender and toned.
• Arch-Enemy: Lita, most notably but Victoria most frequently. The two actually only ever teamed together once in 2004 when Victoria had just turned face and Trish would turn heel a few weeks later. Molly Holly also made Trish the apex of her hatred of "looks over talent" when it came to wrestling. Jazz also had an intense hatred of Trish, but that was mainly due to her having the title.
• Badass Longcoat: She wore one when managing Test and Albert and then later during when wrestling as part of her entrance attire around 2002-2003.
• Battle Couple: With Jeff Hardy against Victoria and Stevie Richards. With Christian against Spike Dudley and Chris Jericho. With Carlito Colón against Melina Perez and Johnny Nitro. Then with Carlito against Edge and Lita.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: She managed to avert this trope occasionally, particularly in her feuds with Jazz and Victoria who each made her bleed from the mouth on occasion. Lita used a chair to give her a broken bloody nose, which lead to Trish continuing to compete with a protective face mask.
• Berserk Button: When Elias said to her that he didn't date a women in their 60's and Trish slapped him.
• Bitch Slap:
  • This was how she turned heel on Chris Jericho. After seemingly accidentally causing a distraction that led to Christian beating him, she slapped him in the face and shared The Big Damn Kiss with Christian.
  • Earlier in her career, this was also how she turned face in the first place. Having been abused by Vince McMahon one too many times, she slapped him in the face during his match against Shane.
• Bound and Gagged: Was tied to a chair with rope and gagged with black tape while kidnapped by MNM.
• Broken Aesop: Her lecture to Christina Crawford and Ivelisse Vélez on being in a man's world where arguing over the former injuring the latter hurt their chances to win Tough Enough 5 ended up as one when Vélez was eliminated for the injury and only the injury.
• But Not Too Foreign: Canadian of Greco-Polish descent. WWE just said that she was Canadian, although some fans have referred to her as a "Greek goddess."
• Chickification: Briefly after her 2004 heel turn. She ended up acting as Christian's manager, and in a handicap match against Chris Jericho, was presented as a Damsel in Distress (note that a few months previously, in an intergender tag match, she and Lita had come close to beating him). Then she won the Women's Championship again, albeit having to rely on her bodyguard Tyson Tomko.
• Character Development: In Kayfabe, she started out as The Vamp, using her wiles both to motivate her tag team and to distract her opponents. When T&A broke up, she became a Gold Digger pursuing Vince McMahon. When Vince put her through a Humiliation Conga, she Took a Level in Badass and became a full-on Action Girl.
• D-Cup Distress: Due to back problems and health concerns, she had her breast implants removed in 2008.
• Derailing Love Interests: She and Christian were quietly separated as an on screen couple after Christian had to rehab an injury, and Trish was inserted back into the women's division.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Well 2003 wasn't 'early' in her career, but she started using the Chick Kick then. It was originally just a signature move, aside from getting her the win at WrestleMania. But by 2004, it had become a finisher.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: She started as an untrained valet and ended as a much respected champion with several title reigns.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Mickie James, in Kayfabe.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: Her flat cap in 2003 was quite sparkly.
• Evil Feels Good: In her 2004-2005 heel run, Trish was positively gleeful whenever she did something nasty.
• Evil Versus Evil: Trish and Stephanie McMahon were both heels who worked together against Lita but fought against each other on the subject of Vince McMahon because Vince wanted to have an affair with Trish while his wife was catatonic and Stephanie disapproved. Afterwards, Vince got bored of her and took Stephanie's side, which is when Trish made her face turn.
• Expy: She and Spike Dudley served as mutual expies of each other, ever so briefly, while she was on Raw and he was on Smackdown. Comparatively diminutive blonde heel champions with elevated bulldog finishers and backup from two larger guys (Christian and Tomko for Trish, Bubba Ray and Devon for Spike)
• Eye Take: Did a good one after the Chicago Street Fight with Victoria on the January 27, 2003 Raw, which can be found on the 2003 WWE Divas: Desert Heat DVD. Victoria had won and she and Steven Richards were laughing about it on the top of the entrance way when Jazz returned, shoved Victoria aside, and power walked down to the ring. When Trish got up and saw who was in the ring, her eyes got wide and she started backing away, in a kind of Oh, Crap!/Anything but That! way, leading to Jazz giving her a DDT, a Fisherman's Buster and locking her in the STF.
• Face/Heel Double-Turn:
  • The first few times she feuded with Lita, she was the heel and the latter the face. But during her 2005 injury, Lita made a Face–Heel Turn to become Edge's girlfriend. Trish made her return as a face and they feuded one year later - the first time the roles had ever been reversed in that situation.
  • Victoria was her Arch-Enemy for 2002-2003 as a crazed psycho heel. Victoria turned face in 2004 shortly before Trish turned heel, and they had a brief feud later in the year in the different roles.
• Face–Heel Turn: Turned heel by attacking Becky Lynch in 2023 after losing the Women's Tag Team Championships to Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez. Trish substituted for an injured Lita before the match, taking the pin in her stead. The reason for heel turn: She was frustrated at her and Lita being Lynch's sidekick, treating it as a lack of respect for how she defined the women's division.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: During her heel runs.
• Finishing Move
  • Initially a bulldog. Later and most commonly the Stratusfaction (bulldog kicked off the top rope). Sometimes substituted for a top turnbuckle or sling shot bulldog. She also used the Chick Kick, which began as a signature but was eventually hyped as a finisher.
  • She also once added a heavily hyped leglock called the Stratusphere to her arsenal - and after a couple cards never used it again, and even its name was eventually recycled and given to a different move.
• Five Moves of Doom: Air Canada (Lou Thesz Press), spinebuster, Stratusphere (handstand headscissors takedown), another headscissor variation and a Chick Kick were her preferred ones. If all else fails, she has an extra sixth move in her arsenal: Stratusfaction (springboard bulldog).
• Fleeting Demographic Rule:
  • Is one of the famous instances of the "Beast vs. Beauty" feud. It had previously been done with Bull Nakano (beast) vs. Alundra Blayze (beauty) - but Jazz vs. Trish was the most famous modern example. Trish did it again with Victoria later that year (admittedly, in Victoria's case it was attitude rather than her looks that was beastly). WWE have repeated it several times over the years.
  • How about a Diva star feuding with a Loony Fan? Sable and Tori had done it back in 1999 and Beth Phoenix and Rosa Mendes would touch on it in 2009. Trish's one with Mickie James was the most famous example. Ironically this case was the one where the star was the face and the fan was the heel (though Mickie was never booed).
• Foe Romance Subtext: Her later feuds with Lita.
• Fun with Acronyms: Her first valet job was with Test and Albert which she called T&A. Then some other promotion later picked up the acronym.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot
  • The segment where Mickie James kissed her under the mistletoe gained an earth-shattering pop from the live crowd.
  • When Trish was feuding with Lita, she mentioned some moments in Lita's career. She mentioned her Breakup Breakout with Essa Rios, and Lita's appearance on Dark Angel before it was canceled. When Trish tried to put the blame on Lita for both the end of Rios' career and the show's demise, she called Lita "the walking kiss of death," and only the completely Genre Blind didn't realize the two were eventually going to actually kiss.
  • On Canada Walk Of Fame she kissed Pamela Anderson in a parody of Madonna doing so to Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears earlier.
• Groin Attack: On the December 12, 2001 Raw, during the Rock/Trish-The Dudley Boys match, Trish hit the Whazzup headbutt on Stacy Keibler. Oddly, no one commented on it at the time. She also gave it to Vince himself once or twice.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Not surprising, given that she's a feminine wrestler who was a model. Likewise at her Hall of Fame induction, the fans booed when she mentioned her husband (at the idea that she was no longer available).
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Before she settled on Face around the mid 2000s.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Lita in Real Life. On-screen the two had most notable rivalry between divas this century (a match of theirs even main-evented RAW at one point) — off-screen the two are the best of friends and Lita was even named the godmother of Trish's son Max. The WWE finally showed their real life friendship during the fifteenth anniversary episode of RAW. They have since referred to themselves as 'Team Bestie', did many projects outside wrestling together, and even came back in 2018 to work a match at the Evolution PPV (teaming against Alicia Fox and Mickie James).
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: When she was the valet for Test and Albert, two guys who could step over the ring ropes with no problem. They would then grab an arm while she was on the apron and hoist her into the ring over the ropes. She also accompanied The Big Show to the ring on a few occasions. She's five-foot-four, and he's seven feet tall. Also when she was blackmailed into dating the five hundred pound Viscera, Trish was billed at 125 (only a fourth of his weight).
• Humiliation Conga: First William Regal ran in to ensure she lost a match to Stephanie McMahon. Then he turned on her during a tag team match, laying her out with a Regal cutter so Stephanie could pour sewage over Trish while Vince said she was a toy that was no fun to play with. Then Vince made her crawl around and bark like a dog in the middle of the ring.
• Hypocrite: Christy called Trish on her hypocrisy during their feud, when the latter started Slut-Shaming her for posing for Playboy. Christy reminded Trish that it was a bit rich of her to do so, considering her own promiscuous past.
  "Posing for Playboy doesn't make you a slut. Leaping with half the locker room? That makes you a slut!"
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Discussed: In an effort to save herself from Viscera, Trish offered to beat Lita's protege and Playboy Playmate Christy Hemme unconscious, then leave her for Viscera to do what he wanted with. But big Vis only had eyes for Trish at the time and convinced her that Lita's husband Kane would do far worse to Trish without Viscera's protection.
• Idiot Ball: After kissing Bubba Ray Dudley at Backlash, it probably wasn't very wise of her to flip her hair and smirk, making it obvious she had been trying to manipulate him...
• Ignore the Fanservice: Her attempts to distract or charm male wrestlers often backfired hilariously:
  • Steve Blackman sprayed her with a fire extinguisher when she tried to distract him during a Hardcore title match, before dousing Albert and winning the match.
  • Mick Foley, as WWE Commissioner, threw a fit when Trish tried to "persuade" him to give her the night off. He was so angry at being "sexually harassed", in his words, that he not only changed his mind about giving her the night off as he originally planned, he immediately booked her into a match.
  • Kane simply told her that her "mammary glands" didn't impress him.
• Important Haircut: Took the dye out of her hair, going back to her natural brunette after leaving WWE. Actually a subversion as it was unintentional. Her hairstylist made her brunette without her asking and she just went with it. She went back blonde in 2016.
• Irony: One in-ring promo against Lita where she was the heel and Lita the face. This was after the Matt Hardy-Edge business had become public knowledge - so the fans were chanting "slut" at Lita. Trish said to the crowd "don't call her a slut" but phrased it in a way that suggested they were really chanting it at Trish and she was just being oblivious. Of course they actually were chanting at Lita and that was Trish's attempt to get the heat back on her.
• Kick Chick: Her finishing move was delivering a kick to the temple, known as the "Chick Kick." It usually only got a pin if she was a heel however.
• Kinky Spanking: Happened a few times, with Trish on both sides of the equation - paddling Stacy Keibler after defeating her, to being spanked by Chyna after being completely dominated and pinned.
• Kiss of Distraction: Used it a few times in April 2000 to prevent Bubba Ray Dudley from powerbombing her through a table. It stopped working at Backlash.
• Made of Iron
  • Every time she got her ass kicked in Kayfabe or she was legitimately injured, she always came back for more. In fact, getting her ass kicked and getting put through tables before she ever had any ability only whetted her hunger to learn and get in the ring.
  • She's even shrugged off getting shot with a taser in real life. During the reality show Armed and Famous, celebrities were trained to become police officers. The local law stated that you cannot legally carry a taser unless you've been tased yourself. The other celebs chose the easier option of merely having an alligator clip attached to their skin before being shocked. Trish was the only one who chose the more painful option of having the actual barbs shot into her skin.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: As Chris Jericho (see Really Gets Around below) said on the March 29, 2004 Raw,
  "Three time 'Babe of the Year?' Wasn't Babe a talking pig?"
• The Mentor: For Diva Search winner Ashley Massaro and the Tough Enough season five prospects.
• Modesty Towel
  • The November 22, 2004 Raw opened with a skit that parodied a NFL Monday Night Football segment (featuring a towel-clad Nicolette Sheridan seducing Philadelphia Eagles wide-receiver Terrell Owens), with Trish taking the Sheridan role to seduce Shelton Benjamin and, when he brushed her aside, Vince McMahon.
  • Also used to deter an overeager Mickie James.
• Ms. Fanservice: Even later in her career, when she wore more clothing and focused mostly on wrestling, Trish was still a constant source of fan service, only stopping short of posing for Playboy. She believed that if the fans wanted a sexual image of her, she could give it to them while keeping her clothes on.
• Mud Wrestling: Changing mud to gravy really doesn't change anything. Stratus did the best she could with it, though, Stacy knocking her off the top of the stage before it started.
• Not in the Face!: Trish insisted on it after Lita broke her nose and wrestled in an acrylic face mask just in case her opponents decided not to comply. Trish actually kept it on after she was healed until she finally removed it when in need of a hard object to hit Lita with.
• Oh, Crap!: A few of her early matches against Lita largely saw her running away like her life depended on it from the Team Xtreme member.
• Pet the Dog: Her return after the second diva search to protect its winner Ashley from Vince's Devils was enough to turn her face again after her betrayal of Chris Jericho at WrestleMania XX.
• Popularity Power: While not to the level of an Invincible Hero in that she dropped the belt to Molly, Victoria, Jazz and Mickie James in clean finishes, Trish never spent much time out of the spotlight or title hunt once she first entered it, winning more championships than any of her contemporaries. It was also suggested once on WWE Confidential that the fan voted babe of the year award be renamed the Trish Stratus award based on how often she won it - although she did fail to win it at least once.
• Pretty in Mink: Sometimes liked to wear fur jackets, and fur hats◊ when she walks to the ring.
• Pun: From the Blooper Reel Easter Egg on the WWE Divas South of the Border DVD: There's a scene of Trish in a bikini shown from the back and she says to the cameraman, "Are you trying to get a behind-the-scenes shot?"
• Purple Is Powerful: Wore plenty of purple ring gear when she was starting to be taken seriously as a wrestler. She won her fourth Women's Championship while wearing a purple singlet.
• Put on a Bus: Most notable when Viscera literally squashed her. Trish was champion at the time and Lita was also injured, Molly Holly had asked for her release, Jazz, Nidia and Gail Kim had all been let go and this left Victoria as the only actual wrestler on the roster. This meant that the title was inactive for about five months.
• Really Gets Around
  • Victoria implied that Trish slept her way to the top of the fitness modelling world and left her behind. Before the Trish/Linda Miles-Molly Holly/Jackie Gayda match on the June 24, 2002, Raw, Molly talked about bringing "dignity back to the WWE Women's title by earning it. And not by being a sleazy tramp who sleeps her way to the top like some people."^note Oddly, Trish's only response to this was to accuse Molly of having cheated to win the title and insulting Molly's ass again. And, of course, on the Raw two weeks after she turned heel on Jericho, on "The Highlight Reel", he called her a "filthy, dirty, disgusting, brutal bottom-feeding trashbag ho." Given Trish's previous affair angle with Vince McMahon, there really was not much she could say to Molly, nor to Jericho given she was using sex with Christian to taunt him, but Victoria had gotten onto Raw as a Godfather Ho.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: As one of the trainers on the revival of WWE Tough Enough. She was notably the nicest.
• Retired Badass: She retired several years ago, and seemed to have become content running a yoga studio in Canada. However, come 2011, she jumped back into the fray. On top of that, she's teaching the next generation on Tough Enough, and was even able to train Snooki from Jersey Shore well enough to put on a passable match at Wrestlemania. Come 2023, she has fully went from "I am retired" to "I was retired" to aid in Becky Lynch's feud with Damage CTRL.
• Ring Oldies: While she was at one point by far the youngest person ever inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame (at the age of only 37, since she retired early), she would make a number of brief one-off appearances over the next decade, before officially coming out of retirement in 2023 at the age of 47 and picking up where she left off, putting her in this category.
• The Rival
  • Lita, first and foremost. Ivory and Jacqueline, whom she got friendlier with as time went on and ended up frequently tagging with. As her "biggest fan", Mickie's rivalry at first was built around getting rid of Trish's protege Ashley, then getting rid of Trish's boyfriend Chad.
  • Rival Turned Evil: Mickie James for a stretch. As her biggest fan, Mickie's rivalry was first built around getting rid of Trish's protege Ashley, then getting rid of Trish's boyfriend Chad. Then focusing on destroying and replacing her former idol when Trish said they need time apart. They made up eventually when Lita became (even more of) their mutual enemy. Trish herself was an evil turned rival to Lita beforehand when she was seduced by and sided with Christian at Wrestlemania XX.
• Self-Deprecation: Trish poked fun at her botch of a Stratusphere at Elimination Chamber 2011, tweeting that she should have remembered to bring her wrestling boots (having attempted the move on Layla while wearing high heels).
• Sexy Soaked Shirt:
  • Via spraying herself with a hose during her segment on the 2000 WWF Divas: Postcard from the Carribean VHS release.
  • She got her clothes soaking wet during her pre-WWF days as a fitness model.
• Signature Move: She keeps adding them. The Ma-Trish back-bend dodge, Ma-Trish Reloaded (dodge to head scissors), Whirlybird head scissors, Ma-Trish Revolutions (dodge to whirlybirds), Air Canada (Lou Thesz press with punches), Stratusphere (top rope counter headscissors)...
• Shameful Strip: She was in perhaps the biggest and infamous one of wrestling in 2001. After Trish Stratus apologized to Vince for some infraction, Vince made her strip, saying "If you're truly sorry, Trish, ..." and ordering her to remove an article of clothing. She was down to her Black Bra and Panties and was about to take off her bra by the time he stopped.^note As a sign that the Right To Censor gimmick was being phased out, they did not interrupt this segment, even though any other time a woman was taking her clothes off in the ring they would have been out there as quickly as possible.
• She's Back: Wrestlemania 27. And she was entrant number 30 in the first ever women's Royal Rumble.
• Shout-Out: The first night after she broke her nose at Survivor Series 2004 she cut a promo yelling at Lita for forcing her to wear a massive protector mask, when she started getting boos from the crowd. She responded to them with Don't hate me because I'm beautiful!
• Slut-Shaming: Received it from her rivals for her past relationship with Vince McMahon, even then-current member of Vince's Devils Candice Michelle, who was having flings with Vince. Received it from Chris Jericho and the fans for dumping him for Christian. Trish also wrote 'Slut' on Christy Hemme's back during their feud because Hemme had posed in Playboy. One of Hemme's counter arguments was to call Trish out on her Hypocrisy, given her past flings.
• Spiritual Successor: NXT's Mandy Rose looks strikingly similar to early-career Trish, and like Trish, she's a former fitness model who came into wrestling with no experience. Time will tell if her ring-work can elevate her to this status.
• Stalker with a Crush: The "Trish's Biggest Fan" angle.
• Stripperiffic: Her outfits in the ring when she first showed up were very skimpy, due to being an eye candy valet. Around 2002 she was wearing less revealing ring gear in an effort to be taken more seriously. She turned heel at Wrestlemania XX and showed up on the following Raw in a two piece, but still wrestled in her less revealing gear. She outright said that she kept her ring gear more modest to avoid being Best Known For The Fanservice.
• Tagline: "100% Stratusfaction guaranteed." She lives up to it, too.
• Three Month Rule: Turned heel on Jericho at WrestleMania XX, March 14, 2004. Lita's "pregnancy"^note via Kane's Scarpia Ultimatum was announced exactly three months later, on the June 14, 2004 Raw. While not acknowledging how much time had passed between her turn and this announcementeventually leading to her heel turn after it was revealed that she had cheated on Matt Hardy in Real Life with Adam "Edge" Copeland and the collapse of her career, Trish pretty much captured the irony of the situation.
  Trish: Imagine, and they call ME a slut.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl:
  • Her dynamic with Lita, and Molly Holly too. At first, anyway.
  • In their feud during the build-up to Wrestlemania 21, Trish played the tomboy to Christy Hemme's girly girl. Trish had become an accomplished and prideful multi-time women's champion by this stage in her career, while Christy was a playboy model who wore fancy dresses and bikini's and engaged in pillow fights. Their whole feud was based on Trish's perception that Christy wasn't a worthy competitor for her championship, as she considered herself a legit women's wrestler whereas Christy was just a diva.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Describes herself as growing up a tomboy who played a lot of sports — and was working as a receptionist in a gym when she was discovered. This didn't stop her from playing the Girly Girl to many other Divas' tomboys — Lita, Jazz, Victoria etc.
• Tomboyness Upgrade: She debuted in WWE as a Ms. Fanservice who wore minidresses and fur coats all the time, relying on seduction and cat fighting. By the time of her 2002 title reigns, she had dropped most overt sexuality in her character, was almost always dressed casually and only had a mild feminine streak to her ring gear.
• Token Good Teammate: Of the Tough Enough trainers she was by far the nicest and most affable. In contrast to Bill DeMott and Booker T's yelling, Trish would more often calmly motivate the contestants. That being said, she still was the one who got Matt Cross eliminated.
• Too Dumb to Live: She came across as this during her earliest WWE appearances. Filming table-related promos filled with sexual innuendo is one thing, but using them to tease Buh Buh Ray Dudley, a man known for smashing people through tables, and portrayed as looking utterly insane after doing so? Needless to say, Jim Ross Lampshaded the fact that she was just begging for trouble.
• Took a Level in Badass: From eye candy only to talented wrestler. This is in fact the main reason why she's considered by many to be one of the greatest female wrestlers of all time- because she was hired solely to show off her goodies for the horny male audience, but refused to be pigeonholed into such a disposable role and worked her ass off to become a real, respected wrestler.
• True Blue Femininity: When she was a face she wore a lot of blue outfits. She had several variations of a top and tights in different shades of blue.
• The Vamp: Subverted, Trish tried sometimes but was really bad at it, ultimately failing at her goals with every man she set out to seduce; Buh Buh Ray put her through a table, Vince and his daughter humiliated her, Viscera turned on her and injured her, and actually she was seduced by Christian.
• Victory Pose On Person: In WWE Immortals, she rounds off her finshing move by stomping with her high-heeled foot on the spinning opponent's head, then resting her foot on it as part of her Victory Pose.
• Victorious Childhood Friend: Trish's husband was once her best friend in high school and was also friends with her cousins.
• We Used to Be Friends: After Trish had turned heel, the relationship between her and Lita was portrayed this way. They made up onscreen when both returned for the 15th Anniversary of Raw.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Or Wearing a Flag on Your Butt. Trish has fought at least one match while wearing a pair of tight Canadian flag-patterned shorts.
• Wolf Whistle: Trish attracted a lot of these from the crowd when she first started in the WWE as the valet for T&A.
• Worth It: Trish's expression after her first Women's Championship win shows this. She's in a lot of pain and needs the referee's help to get to her feet, but the beating she took was worth it to be the Women's Champion.

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