Mercedes Martinez Talks About Her All-Time Favorite Match And What She Takes From It

Mercedes Martinez is second only to Emi Sakura as the most experienced woman on the AEW/ROH roster, having been a wrestler since 2000. From early in her career, she was widely respected as one of the best on the independent scene, and she's brought the fruits of decades of high-level work with her as a veteran hand in AEW.

Recently, she shared some of that insight in an appearance on Cultaholic Wrestling's "Desert Island Graps" podcast, where she explained what her all-time favorite match as a fan is and what she's learned from it as a wrestler.

"My first match would be Bret [Hart] vs. Shawn Michaels [at] WrestleMania XII, the Iron Man match," she responded when asked which three matches she'd pick to watch repeatedly if she were stuck on a desert island. 

"Bret is my favorite wrestler of all time. He is one I've tried to mold my wrestling towards if I can, but he is the one I've always watched. That Shawn Michaels match, the Iron Man match, was the first time I've ever seen wrestlers go 60 minutes on a national scale. I've done Iron Woman matches, 60 minutes plus, so when I say I watched that match to get prepared for my own Iron Woman matches, that was one that hit the books running, because that's one of my all-time favorites."

Martinez explained that she had studied that match to analyze how the two worked to hold the fans' attention. "It's hard to make sure you keep the crowd engaged for a whole hour," she explained. "It's hard to keep them engaged for, sometimes, 10 [minutes]. So when I watch the Bret and Shawn [match], and it's the one match that I always go to, what I do is I don't necessarily try to take their moves, I try to take where their up and downs were. Their psychology and how they kept the crowd engaged through their whole 60-minute match ... What I try to do is pay tribute to their psychology in the ring."