Melina Reveals Why She Turned Down Playboy Opportunity
Melina is a former champion in WWE who decided against posing in Playboy at a time when other women on the roster did it.
The 2000s era of WWE was a time of change as the roster was hiring more women. Some of them had experience as independent wrestlers while others were found by model searches or the WWE-run “Diva Search” that took place in those days.
Among the most successful women in that era was Melina. The woman whose full name is Melina Perez is a former five-time Women’s Champion in WWE (three times with the Women’s Title, two times with the retired Divas Title) who worked for WWE as a manager/wrestler from 2004 until being released in 2011.
In that mid-2000s WWE era, several women on the roster took it all off to pose in Playboy. Women like Torrie Wilson, Christy Hemme, Candice Michelle, Maria Kanellis and Ashley Massaro all posed for Playboy where they showed off their nude figures. Sable and Chyna were two WWE women who did it years earlier as well.
As for the ones that didn’t pose for Playboy, they all have their reasons for it.
Melina supports women who posed for Playboy, but it wasn’t for her
While talking about that Playboy Era of WWE, Melina was cool with other women doing it but felt like it would send the wrong message about what she was doing in WWE. She explained it to Wrestling Shoot Interviews by saying that it might change the perception that people have of you.
“There’s nothing wrong with doing it. It’s just my mentality back then was, ‘The main reason I got into wrestling was for wrestling.’ It does change how people perceive you when you do certain things. So it’s not to say like, ‘Oh, I look down on people who do it.’ It’s just knowing how it will affect you in the future.”
As she continued, Melina also had a family reason for not posing for Playboy as well.
“In my heart, the reason I didn’t want to do it was [because] I didn’t want somebody to come into my dad’s music store and put that [Playboy] magazine in my dad’s face,” Melina added. “Also, I didn’t want the person I’m dating, the person I love, to see other guys see me naked. He’s the only one who’s going to see me naked.”