Wrestler of the Week: Michelle McCool

Kimberly Schueler

RondaRousey.com’s Wrestler of the Week series profiles significant wrestlers from the past and present. 


As the Royal Rumble pay-per-view approaches, RondaRousey.com’s latest Wrestler of the Week is naturally the woman who set the record for most eliminations in a Women’s Royal Rumble match, Michelle McCool. With her model good looks and ever-improving in-ring ability and promo skills, McCool fit the Trish Stratus mold of the ideal WWE Diva and was able to stand out and make significant achievements in her six-year wrestling career.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l69xskPdtyY

McCool was a wrestling fan as a child, but it wasn’t her first choice of career. She worked as a middle school teacher and a personal trainer before joining WWE for the 2004 Diva Search, which she didn’t win but still ended up being hired by the company. In the clip above of the “Viva Las Divas” Bikini Contest from the April 7, 2005 episode of SmackDown, you can see how McCool—and most women in WWE at the time—was presented at the time: The former National Physique Committee fitness contest competitor was praised as “a tremendous athlete” by commentary as she did gymnastics in a bikini, but it’s clear that looking good in a swimsuit was valued more highly than the athletic ability of female performers at this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2A15xNOmoE

After some brief periods as a manager, some time in WWE;s Deep South Wrestling (DSW) developmental territory, a sexy teacher gimmick, and some time off to deal with medical issues, McCool returned to SmackDown, where she would perform for most of her WWE career, as a heroic—if generic—appealing, everywoman character. The “All-American Diva” was involved in a short love triangle storyline with Chuck Palumbo and Jamie Noble, but she soon started competing in a series of matches with wrestlers like Victoria, Maryse, and Eve Torres to decide SmackDown’s number one Diva. Although with the WWE Women’s Championship on RAW, the brand didn’t have a title to signify which woman was officially on top.

In the summer of 2008, that would change. After winning a “Golden Dreams” match on the July 4 episode of SmackDown to earn a place in the match, McCool defeated Natalya at the Great American Bash to become the inaugural WWE Divas Championship. McCool later called being the first-ever Divas Champion, “something I’m proud of…  because it’s something we fought for for so long, so week in and week out we were begging and pleading… to have something to chase after, something to say ‘I am the best…’ so it was really rewarding.” This pride was understandable, even despite the ultimate backlash about the design of what would be nicknamed “the butterfly belt.”

McCool lost the championship to Maryse, and she soon after snapped and blamed special guest referee Maria for the loss. This time, the villainous persona would take, the most familiar version of McCool that would define her for the rest of her career. At The Bash pay-per-view in 2009, McCool won the WWE Women’s Championship for the first time—after interference from Alicia Fox on her behalf—and became the first woman to hold both of these titles.

During this Women’s Championship reign, McCool embarked on the most popular gimmick of her career when she aligned with Layla. Over the autumn and winter of 2009, the women increasingly worked together, began acting more similarly, and even started using shared catchphrases.

Their first major storyline as a duo was also their most controversial, the “Piggie James” feud with Mickie James. In an effort to make James leave SmackDown, Michelle McCool and Layla (now officially calling themselves LayCool) started mocking Mickie’s weight, and the rest all escalated from there. They made a parody video of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” that also depicted Mickie as Porky Pig, they bought her a Jenny Craig gift certificate for Christmas, they hosted a farewell party for her in a very long SmackDown segment that ended with Mickie getting hit in the face with a pig-shaped cake, and Layla even dressed up in a fat suit and pig mask to lose a staged match for the Women’s Championship against McCool. Their bullying antics would usually be the only women’s segment on the show for the week. Mickie James finally used the fat suit to her advantage to beat McCool for the championship in under a minute at the Royal Rumble, but that unfortunately didn’t end the feud.

The level of interference used by LayCool would only escalate as they got SmackDown Consultant Vickie Guerrero on their side and she started to allow them to have more two-on-one handicap matches, first against Mickie, then against Beth Phoenix. The LayCool vs. Phoenix feud also included body-shaming mean girl behavior, like the Layla vs. Phoenix match being dubbed “intergender” and the “Extreme Makeover” match at Extreme Rules for the Women’s Championship, in which cosmetics could be used as weapons.

Everything became even more corrupt and convoluted on LayCool’s behalf when Layla pinned Phoenix in a handicap match (a rematch for McCool’s title loss) to win the Women’s Championship, and the duo started calling themselves the co-champions. As they feuded with Kelly Kelly and Tiffany, this title and their partnership with Guerrero allowed for things like the more dominant singles competitor McCool fighting in Layla’s place in matches.

When General Manager Teddy Long told LayCool they had to decide who was the real Women’s Champion and give back one of the two belts that they had been carrying around, they jokingly broke the title in a tug of war and each carried around half. Although McCool and Layla performed the heck out of these storylines, it was clear long before the literal breaking of the Women’s Championship that the WWE women’s titles were not considered as important as the men’s—who did not have comic storylines like these for the WWE Championship, for example, despite its own very cartoonish appearance—at this time.

Later in 2010, LayCool started feuding with WWE Divas Champion Melina—who performed on RAW—for a championship unification match at Night of Champions. Despite Layla still being the official Women’s Champion, McCool wrestled on the pay-per-view and defeated Melina. Her win started a new lineage of women’s championships in WWE in the form of the Divas Championship, which lasted until the butterfly belt was retired and replaced with the RAW Women’s and SmackDown Women’s Championships in 2016.

However, LayCool didn’t only make history in a regressive way during this time. During their feud with Natalya—which saw them both successfully defend their championship against her one-on-one, only to then lose to her in a short handicap match—they lost the first-ever Divas Tables match against Natalya and Beth Phoenix at TLC. McCool later called this her favorite match of her career.

No matter how dominant a tag team or alliance is, they rarely last forever, and when the volatile pairing of LayCool started losing, they also started to implode. McCool started to think Layla could not win matches on her own, which caused so much drama in the tag team that they went to couples therapy on SmackDown. McCool eventually attacked Layla after a match and then during therapy, making it clear the relationship was officially the opposite of “flawless.”

When McCool cost Layla a match against Eve Torres at the 2011 WWE Draft, the English wrestler—by now the much more sympathetic of the pair—snapped. She attacked McCool, and suddenly these two were in a serious, one-on-one wrestling feud for the first time in years. They wrestled to a no-contest on SmackDown on April 29, 2011, which led to Layla challenging McCool to a match at Extreme Rules with no countouts and no disqualifications. McCool accepted only if it would also mean that the loser had to leave WWE. At the pay-per-view, McCool would fall victim to the stipulation she requested when she lost and left WWE for over seven years.

Retirements in wrestling often don’t really take, but McCool’s pretty much did. Her next WWE appearance was at RAW 25 in 2018 for a segment honoring female legends of the red brand, despite performing mainly on SmackDown. Soon after, she made her in-ring return at the first Women’s Royal Rumble match and set the record for most eliminations, then returned again for the battle royal at WWE Evolution this fall.

Though it seems unlikely McCool will return to regular WWE competition, anything is possible in the wrestling world, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see her show up at the second Women’s Royal Rumble match to try and pick up a WrestleMania title shot. If anyone could make that kind of a comeback, it would be McCool, one of the most dominant wrestlers of the Divas Era.

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