{"id":76392,"date":"2020-09-18T14:25:35","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T18:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=76392"},"modified":"2020-09-18T14:25:35","modified_gmt":"2020-09-18T18:25:35","slug":"report-melina-to-return-to-the-wwe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/09\/18\/report-melina-to-return-to-the-wwe\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Melina to Return to the WWE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In what may be surprising news in an otherwise slow week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pwinsider.com\/ViewArticle.php?id=139658&amp;p=2\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>PW Insider<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>are reporting that former<strong> WWE<\/strong> Divas Champion, <strong>Melina<\/strong> (real name Melina Perez)is set to return to the company.\u00a0 The former WWE star has spent a decade away from a full-time deal with the WWE, but that now looks set to change.<\/p>\n<p>Melina is, of course, something of a memorable and recognizable part of WWE&#8217;s &#8220;divas era&#8221; of the women&#8217;s division.\u00a0 As recently as last year, she made a one-night-only <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2019\/07\/22\/melina-returns-to-raw\/\" target=\"_self\">appearance on RAW<\/a>, in what was her first WWE event since 2011.\u00a0 Clearly she has impressed someone behind the scenes and earned a new deal.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There had been interest in Perez earlier this year as the company attempted to book her for the 2020 Women\u2019s Royal Rumble, but at the time, she was under an agreement with the NWA.\u00a0 That agreement has since expired. [PW Insider]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A three-time WWE Women&#8217;s Champion and a two-time WWE Divas Champion, Melina had a successful run in WWE.\u00a0 Initially debuting in 2004 as the valet of <strong>Johnny Nitro<\/strong> (<strong>John Morrison<\/strong>) and<strong> Joey Mercury,<\/strong> Melina helped <strong>MNM<\/strong> become something of a memorable tag team.\u00a0 She would depart MNM and go solo shortly after, going onto capture her first Women&#8217;s Championship in 2007, defeating<strong> Mickie James<\/strong>.\u00a0 If Mickie was the top women&#8217;s babyface of the mid-2000s, Melina was certainly the top heel.\u00a0 Whilst Mickie was the lovable, fun, white meat babyface who won fans over with good matches, Melina was the deceiving, vindictive character who personified the now frowned upon term &#8220;diva&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>WWE has changed dramatically since Melina&#8217;s heyday.\u00a0 Now 41, she certainly no longer possesses the element of time being on her side.\u00a0 She&#8217;s a veteran now and would be the oldest active competitor within the women&#8217;s division (given that she is five months older than former rival, Mickie James).\u00a0 However, Melina is infinitely better as a performer &#8211; having spent a considerable part of the last decade honing her craft on the independent circuit.\u00a0 Most recently, she has worked for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2019\/10\/08\/nwa-power-a-look-at-nwas-roster-ahead-of-premiere\/\" target=\"_self\"><strong>NWA<\/strong><\/a> and<strong> Warriors of Wrestling<\/strong>, where she is the current WOW Women&#8217;s Champion.\u00a0 Everyone better watch out &#8211; the Scream Queen is here to reclaim her throne.<\/p>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.\u00a0<\/em>WWE fan? You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In what may be surprising news in an otherwise slow week, PW Insider\u00a0are reporting that former WWE Divas Champion, Melina (real name Melina Perez)is set to return to the company.\u00a0 The former WWE star has spent a decade away from a full-time deal with the WWE, but that now looks set to change. Melina is, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2482,"featured_media":50834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,317,4,3,320],"tags":[3666,333,771,47],"class_list":["post-76392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-women","category-wwe","category-wwe-universe","category-wwe-women","tag-melina","tag-mickie-james","tag-nwa","tag-wwe"],"modified_by":"Alex Richards, LWOF Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2482"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}