WWE Women's Wrestling Sucks

I wrote on here once that I thought that TNA's Knockouts were overrated and the WWE's Divas were underrated in terms of wrestling ability. Well, after a few months of repeated viewings, I'm ready to say that I'm only half-right. I still find the Knockouts to be overrated, if only because most of the strength of that division comes from the contrast in booking quality between that division (good-to-great) and the rest of TNA (God-awful). Yes, they have some quality workers (Tara, Kong, Cheerleader Melissa, Sarah Stock, Hamada), more than enough to build a division, but it's also very top heavy. After those five, the quality kinda drops off substantially.

Still, a division where the dregs consist of Christy Hemme and Velvet Sky is still far, far better than a division where Michelle McCool can be considered in the top 5. I've seen enough attempts at women's wrestling in the WWE over the last year or so to know that I've seen too much. I guess it's to say that I've had stars in my eyes in regards to the three-way feud with Beth Phoenix, Mickie James and Melina at the end of the last year/beginning of this year. They put on good matches and carried the Women's division on RAW for a good six months. Then the draft happened and they split Melina up from the other two. Then, for some inexplicable reason, they started to downplay Beth and then had Mickie James feud with Maryse Ouellet. Okay, Maryse didn't seem terrible... until she got into a RAW ring and just flat couldn't keep up with Mickie. Of course, Maryse got hurt and they'd been trying to find someone to feud with Mickie ever since. When it was found out that Gail Kim really wasn't all that good and that both Alicia Fox and Rosa Mendes were TERRIBLE, they kinda just gave up, started giving us our dose of Diva wrestling on RAW in clusterfuck matches with no sense of pacing or crisp movement. You see, because the WWE insists on having Divas matches even though most of the women in the company can't wrestle. To add insult to injury, they took the two best wrestlers on the roster and shunted them over to Smackdown this past week, which is good for that division in that they get two really good women wrestlers (Mickie and Beth), but bad for everything else, since RAW will have even more Diva horsecrap to drag it down, and Mickie and Beth will probably end up feuding with Michelle McCool and *ugh* Maria respectively.

I know that it might seem chauvinistic to suggest that the WWE curtails its women's wrestling and actually employs, y'know, valets, but if you can't wrestle, you can't wrestle. Of their Diva's roster, only Mickie, Beth, Melina and Natalya Neidhart actually look credible in the ring. I've heard Katie Lea does too, but I couldn't tell you since she rarely ever wrestles anymore. That's sad. Two of the women who actually can wrestle are relegated to valet duty while the ones who should be valets are Botchamania-ing the joint up in EXTENDED matches. The rest are varying degrees of dogshit. Hell, how embarrassing is it for the division that Maria Menounos can step right into the ring and look as good or better than 2/3 of the other women in the match? Let me repeat this, A TALK SHOW HOST WITH NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE AND A SORE HAMSTRING LOOKED MORE CREDIBLE THAN TWO-THIRDS OF THE WRESTLERS IN THAT MATCH! If that doesn't set off the warning flare, then nothing will.

The logical answer, of course, would be to consolidate the women who can wrestle, put them on one brand and have them compete in one, unified women's division with one title, preferably the traditional Women's Title and not the pretty butterfly belt that they introduced to appease Taker's fugly-ass cum dumpster. The rest of the women don't have to go, but they can be used in other capacities. The Bella Twins, Kelly Kelly and Rosa Mendes would work perfectly as valets. Layla El and Alicia Fox would be the foundation of a pretty good dance troupe, a la the Nitro Girls, if you wanted to have a sort of cheerleader squad. Eve Torres would be awesome as a backstage interviewer, suffice to say better than anyone they have working the mic backstage right now, or hell, why not try her out as a color commentator? I mean, Jim Ross' contract is almost up. Jerry Lawler might end up as mayor of Memphis one of these days. You're going to need another color commentator to fill the role, and Eve has actually been damn impressive in speaking roles. Let her work with JR the week that Todd Grisham gets hitched (may be too late for that one actually) and see how it goes.

Look, I'm not saying that women shouldn't wrestle. TNA has a fine women's division, and from what I hear, SHIMMER is a pretty good promotion regardless of gender. However, I am unabashed in my hatred for bad wrestling. What the WWE is giving us with the Divas right now is bad wrestling. There's still room for the valet and there are many roles that a woman can fill in a wrestling company without being just eye candy. However, there's nothing more degrading than seeing a woman wrestle badly on TV just to say "hey guys, we're not sexist, really!"