I said i was gonna write something about Vince & Co. shitting on the “Divas”, so here we go…

Did any of you catch Maria’s Youshoot? She says exactly what the problem with the “divas” division is. Vince doesn’t give a shit about them because they don’t sell merch.

If you look back to the attitude era, you had Goldust with Luna, Chyna as a part of DX (and later, Eddie), Sable or  Jacqueline with Marc Mero, Terri with just about every mid-carder, Lita with Essa Rios (and later, The Hardys), Trish with Test & Albert, Molly with Crash & Bob Holly…

Almost all of the female roster were part of some kind of group, so merch sales for the group would’ve been the main priority.  Being “managers” helped them to get known while they trained as well, so by the time a feud reached the point of manager v manager, they knew what they were doing.

Being part of a group meant that whatever heat the group had, the individuals had.

A lot of them also came in with proper training from old-school guys, like Chyna (Killer Kowalski), Lita (Dory Funk, Jr.) Molly Holly (Malenko)…

Today they largely lack proper training, but what’s more important is that they lack any reason for us to care about them.

Beth & Natalya are a team right now & they both look like they know what to do in the ring. They also have the most character development by way of being heels & Beth’s semi-monster push she got when Kong took maternity leave.

What’s Kelly Kelly’s motivation?

Anyone?

Why should she be champion?

What about Eve? A.J.? Aksana? Alicia? Eden? Eve? Kaitlyn? Layla? Rosa? Tamina? (if you answered ”who?” to the majority of these, you’re not alone)

It’s simple things here. How many times did you see Keith Stone & the Bella sisters in some skit backstage this year? That time could’ve been better spent actually developing characters (not necessarily at the cost of dropping product placement either, Miz’s rant against the Subway guy kinda makes sense in hindsight).

The divas get an allotted amount of time on each episode of Raw, i’m not sure if it’s 10 minutes or what these days, but it’s safe to say they don’t get even 25% of the show. “Thank fuck for that!” I hear you cry, but why shouldn’t they be given the same opportunities  as the rest of the mid-carders? Or, to re-word it, shouldn’t they be trained to the same level as everyone else that comes out of Florida? That’d go a long way to stopping people like me from switching off (or going into ignore mode) every time they have a match.

At the heart of it, it seems like the WWE staff go into ignore mode as well.

Vince said recently that the “diva” division is a disappointment, do you know how awful that must’ve made the girls in the locker room feel? Imagine Vince saying publicly “Kofi & Evan have really let me down”, because it’s the same thing. The tag division is non existent, yet Kofi & Evan go out & make the best of a bad situation every time. The division is them, so the belts would just disappear again if if Kofi & Evan were to get no reaction from the crowd.

The “divas” are told “You have a 4 minute battle royal tonight & the last 90 seconds will be just Beth & Kelly, so go out there & put on a show!” Remember when they did the same with the Hardcore championship? Nobody gave a shit. Same thing here, that’s why you only know that Gail Kim walked out of the match because of her tweets.

TNA gives the “knockouts” more time & while the Velvet Sky situation kinda makes sense, it’s still constrained by TNA’s shitty booking. She’s been out making  the best of her abilities on every show & been thrown into almost every storyline going for the last year, but all the “knockouts” need to do to get over at this point is slap Karen Angle.

Maria suggested a “divas” line of Bratz dolls to Vince & co. as something that would make sense & sell well to the market it’s aimed at (rather than trying to sell “divas” action figures to the same young boys that buy Orton/Cena ones), but they didn’t even say “We’ll think about it”.

At the end of the day, while i can’t speak for every single person watching, i’m sure the majority of us would pay more attention to “diva” & “knockout” matches if:

They consisted of more than a head-scissors, Irish whip & roll-up/schoolboy pin.

The  promos didn’t consist of them screaming at each other in the 9th octave.

The storylines made some sort of sense.

We still live in an time where Johnny Ace can walk around telling girls that fake tits will help them get over, so it’ll be a quite a while before Vince stops shitting on the “divas” in public (& Orton in their bags).