Classic WrestleMania Match: Mickie James vs. Trish Stratus, WrestleMania 22
RondaRousey.com’s ClassicMatch series takes a closer look at significant and super cool matches from wrestling history. For WrestleMania Week, the RondaRousey.com staff is covering an entire week of some of our favorite WrestleMania matches..
Can we take a moment to appreciate Mickie James? She’s been active in the industry for 20 years, meaning she started out in an era where there wasn’t much of a path to success for women wrestlers. Despite that, she’s won numerous titles in multiple promotions and is still going strong in WWE, more than keeping up with the current generation of performers.
Mickie James also holds the distinction of wrestling in one of the more memorable women’s matches in WrestleMania history and certainly one of the most memorable feuds—for better and worse—heading into the event. At WrestleMania 22, on April 2,
You see, Mickie James’ debut character on the WWE main roster was “Trish Stratus superfan”—and hey, who wouldn’t be? Trish Stratus was the woman in WWE, combining the overt glamour emphasized in the era, along with in-ring prowess. But as these things tend to happen in WWE (or any narrative fiction), Mickie went from “overly excited but mostly harmless” to “dangerously obsessed,” turning on Stratus and even kidnapping, bounding, and gagging Trish’s pal Ashley Massaro as part of the build-up to the match.
Watching the match now, it’s clear that both the surrounding storyline and the match commentary don’t hold up to current sensitivity standards. Here’s just one quote from Jerry Lawler, addressing James’ Trish fandom gone bad: “Aat one point, Mark Chapman was a huge John Lennon fan.” But it’s OK because the match itself holds up: While it’s just under nine minutes long, it delivers on paying off its substantial story and sits in stark contrast to the other women’s match on the show, a very of-its-era Playboy pillow fight between Candice Michelle and Torrie Wilson.
The match started with a fired-up Stratus—understandably peeved by weeks of James’ harassment, plus,
Things turned around when James ducked a kick on the outside and Stratus hit nothing but the ring post, leading to James working over Stratus with several leg-based attacks, including whipping her into the post, a low drop kick, and a single-leg Boston Crab. It’s at this point the crowd decided that even though James was the villain of the story, she’s actually pretty dang rad. The fans started cheering loudly for her, getting a “Let’s go Mickie” chant going, and her support only grew throughout the match.
Stratus made her way back with a pair of clotheslines and a spinebuster, but only enough for a two-count. The big moves continued, with Stratus reversing a hurricanrana attempt into a running powerbomb. Soon, Stratus went for her bulldog-off-the-ropes finishing
While WrestleMania 22 was the start of James’ championship rise in WWE, it was the end of Stratus’—she retired later in 2006, though she won the Women’s Championship one last time, on her then-final night in the company. James and Stratus renewed their rivalry twice in 2018, with Stratus scoring some long-delayed revenge—first by eliminating James at the inaugural women’s Royal Rumble, then defeating her in a tag team match at the first-ever all-women’s pay-per-view, WWE Evolution, with Trish Stratus and Lita versus Mickie James and Alicia Fox.
You can go back and revisit this match (and the entirety of WrestleMania 22) on the WWE Network.