Fixing the Diva's Division

[thebrainfollower]

I'm still wondering who she feuds with. I could see them turning Nikki when she comes back (they sort of set this up a BIT with Brie mocking Nikki for leaving and losing once) as she is the most over with live crowds of the type they like, or maybe just going with "heck people are cheering for Sasha, let's go there". If either are allowed to stay consistent as a character ala Stone Cold in 97 it could work. If not it will just be heel Charlotte dominating the likes of Paige and Becky.

 

Or wait for Bayley to be called up, but honestly I think this points to a larger problem. WWE has had heels on top for the last few years across the board.

At no point have I seen the WWF so bad at creating good babyfaces. Top to bottom, men, women doesn't matter they just cannot get anyone loved by an audience and when it happens organically they squash it DEAD DEAD DEAD.

 

For a promotion that had a 50 year history of babyfaces on top this is just absurd.

[Russellmania]

if they knew how to book anything successfully, Bayley, Becky, Nattie, and Naomi are a pretty good group of natural babyfaces to build around with Sasha, Nikki, Paige, and Charlotte as heels. Fox, Emma, Brie, and the rest can go either way.

 

Sasha if they just gave her the ball and let her run with it could be a cocky heel turned face ala the Rock someday but that would require way too much creative freedom and they don't do that.

[NotJayTabb]

I agree with the above, except maybe switching Naomi and Paige around. Naomi has blossomed as a heel, it's allowed her to slow things down in the ring and removed some of the sloppier elements of her work. Plus, as long as she keeps her current ring music, she's impossible to cheer.

 

I actually agree that Paige is more comfortable and more natural as a heel, but the audience seems to like her more than a lot of the faces. There's a precedent in the WWE where women with a less conventional, more "outsider" look seem to build a stronger connection with the audience (Lita, AJ Lee), and you can see on places like Twitter the number of young girls who dress up as, or look up to, Paige, and that feels like something they should embrace.

[ragemaster]

One idea would be to help Raw and the diva division, is to split the three hour Raw show. Make hour one the woman show, run it from a smaller hall like the Manhattan centre to give it is own vibe. Then Raw's back to being a two hour show and USA gets its three hours of wrestling.

 

Also you can keep acts like Lana and the Bella's on raw, away from the real woman's wrestling.

Stephanie has to be kept on raw and away from the division, as an on screen talent as she can't help but undermine the girls.

[donsem43]

When you look at the amount of TV time that the women get now, plus the sheer amount of women they have under contract. I don't know how you don't look at setting up a separate show/brand for the women. Right now, there's 11 women who can work in ring on the main roster, 8 regulars on NXT, about 3 on NXT who are doing jobber duty while getting ready for a regular role. Probably another handful who are still training doing NXT house shows (Athena). That's as many women that any of the women's indys (Shimmer, Shine, WSU) use on a show and around the size of the roster that AJW had during it's peak years. All of that for 2 segments for each of Raw and Smackdown, plus a match on Main Event.

[ragemaster]

Simple you book different than raw, do training video's of the top girls, you need to book them as athletes. Go to the home town of your top face or heel and talk to people about her.

There's lots of filler they could do, hell copy Ajpw from the 80's, if you have a girl who can sing have her do her own entrance.

 

Anything to make them different than the men.

 

You could grab 5 to 7 girls from Japan, make a tag division as well.

With ad breaks its about 45 mins of TV, you don't need 40 or 50 girls to book around.

 

It's not hard to do, its just the WWE at the moment seems to have forget how to book a wrestling show.

[Jingus]

In this company's mind, they already DO devote an entirely separate show to women wrestlers. It's called Total Divas. That's as far as they're willing to go in this era, and to suggest anything further is pure fantasy booking.

[ragemaster]

I thought the whole point of this thread is fantasy booking.

[Jingus]

Oh yeah, but I think it's better if the suggestions are something that the company might actually do in real life.

 

As long as Vince is still in charge, I don't see them ever devoting an entire show to women's matches. Under the current setup, I also doubt that they'd change the Raw format so that one hour is devoted to anything other than their ordinary programming. If they did that, the ratings for that one hour would probably drop; and that defeats USA's entire purpose of giving Raw three hours in the first place, which is mostly "we don't have anything else to put in that slot which gets better ratings than Raw does now". (I've seen people at other boards suggesting they should turn the last hour into a talk show format with recaps and promos and analysis, and I think that's just as unlikely as the Divas getting an entire hour of primetime ringside TV all to themselves.)

 

It's a no-win situation for the current regime; if they treat the Divas more seriously and it flops, then it hurts the company financially. If they treat the Divas more seriously and it actually succeeds in a significant way, then it disproves Vince & Co.'s entire philosophy of How Wresting Sports Entertainment Works and we all know that the WWE office is perfectly willing to sabotage parts of their own promotion just in order to prove themselves right.

[ragemaster]

The problem with any suggestions, is they proven they a tired out of touch company.

They not going to change anything until Vince is dead, if even then.

 

Lets take the Charlotte, Reid angle for a start. Forget how out of taste it is for a moment, I'm not defending it.

But in there heads they thought this was a good idea, a week out from a ppv and rushed though it with no thought for long term.

 

Any normal person or booker (wouldn't of done it I know) would have waited and laid out a long term plan for it.

 

You inform the audience about Reid and have Charlotte do a throw away line about how this win is for her brother Reid.

Then Cole in a low voice just lays out the fact that he passed and part of the reason Charlotte here is for Reid memory.

In other words you build for the line "he did not have much fight in him"

 

This is over a 6 week period not one night.

 

I don't want to lay out the whole angle as its in poor taste. But my point is they forgotten how to do basic booking.

 

Same with the build to Undertaker and Brock at the first Wrestlemaina match.

Which is why it was dead with the crowd, as they did such a piss poor job with booking it.

 

That's going back to a year earlier to where HHH beat Brock at wrestlemania. Or even Brock losing to Cena in his first match back with the company.

 

I do agree with everything you said, but even normal suggesting's, aren't going to be taking on board.

 

As a company/Vince can't change there mentally when it comes to booking.

 

They are too busy trying not to be a wrestling company, that they forgotten that's what they do.

[thebrainfollower]

Well Charlotte is now fully fledged heel and that's an improvement. But much like the world title, it's quite a long time since the company had a babyface champion in the division. They now need to scramble to find a top face in the division but given this company's recent track record at creating babyfaces, good luck to that. Bayley is of course the solution and taps into a whole new segment of the population to market but I have zero faith Vince and Dunn will let her be her and book her as the star the division needs since she isn't Vince's fantasy of a sex symbol. There's also turning Sasha into a Rock esque character,which has been suggested above and would work well but again too complex for these nitwits. There's trying to turn Nikki face I guess, given the Bellas do get pops and going the Demolition route (nothing really changes about her character, she's just now doing everything to the people we don't like so it's cool)

Double turning Paige with Charlotte seems to me what they are going for and is a likely to fail idea IMO.

[Russellmania]

8 of the 9 women involved in the initial 3 "Divas Revolution" factions are now heels.

 

I think Nattie and Becky are the only two clear babyface women on the whole main roster. The whole "WWE thinks all women are catty bitches" talking point is very real

[The Chief]

8 of the 9 women involved in the initial 3 "Divas Revolution" factions are now heels.

 

I think Nattie and Becky are the only two clear babyface women on the whole main roster. The whole "WWE thinks all women are catty bitches" talking point is very real

Hey Bellas, you mind playing face again?

 

Somebody needs to chart all of the Bella face/heel turns. The more I think about it, they could rival Big Show.

[thebrainfollower]

hahahahaha.

 

It could be a running gag. Becky Lynch wrestles twice a night on every show for months and goes in search of other nice women.

[Alucard]

I thought Charlotte/Paige was a decent rivalry that turned out a couple pretty good matches but now turning Charlotte heel was horrible timing. After building her up as a sympathetic figure fighting back against Paige, rather than a double turn they've made both of them unlikable. I hope they insert Becky in the title picture now.

[Codysseus]

hahahahaha.

 

It could be a running gag. Becky Lynch wrestles twice a night on every show for months and goes in search of other nice women.

I think this would be a really fun way to build to a Bayley debut

[jcmmnx]

I still can't understand why they turned Paige(the most over face in the division) heel for no reason other than "nobody is allowed to be more popular than Charlotte so turn Paige, keep Sasha off tv, and make sure Becky looks like an idiot at every turn."

[thebrainfollower]

That's exactly why they did it. The viewers don't matter to them in the slightest, they believe they will get enough numbers to stay alive regardless of what they put on TV.

 

And since Charlotte is a HHH pick we are seeing that things in that regard will be little different in that regard when he takes over.

[jcmmnx]

Charlotte seems like more of a Vince pick to me. He was the one that ordered she be in the Tapout commercial. HHH knows what Sasha, Becky, and Bayley can do while Vince doesn't know and probably doesn't care. I'm not saying HHH doesn't want Charlotte to do well, but he probably doesn't favor her over any of the other Horsewomen. I think Vince made up his mind a while ago to push Charlotte as the face of the division, and has no clue that Sasha and Bayley have left her in the dust as all around performers.

[thebrainfollower]

Meltzer reported that WWE saw Charlotte as the face and Paige as the heel at TLC. Huh?

[C.S.]

Meltzer reported that WWE saw Charlotte as the face and Paige as the heel at TLC. Huh?

 

To be honest, Becky Lynch is coming across as whiny and annoying whenever she complains about "The Dirtiest Diva in the Game" cheating to win. As skewed and inconsistently as WWE is portraying all these characters, especially Charlotte and Paige, I do wonder if the end-game is a heel complainer Becky Lynch.

[thebrainfollower]

So Becky Lynch is US? With Vince using her to reinforce his "all women are bitches who hate each other" philosophy by making a person who opposes his view the only real heel?

I wish they'd just pull the trigger on Sasha. Sasha vs Nikki is the feud and matches I wanna see whenever Nikki comes back.

[Jimmy Redman]

I think from their POV you're supposed to be okay with Charlotte and Ric cheating because it's Ric Flair and that's what he does. So Becky is a killjoy for not just going along with it. Also there's the JBL-led "you do what you have to to win" attitude, and sure he's a heel but they repeat it so often that it's almost a de facto truth and thus anyone who wants to win valiantly is a loser and goody two shoes.

 

And one wonders why heels can't get heat anymore. They're using cheating as a babyface tactic more than a heel one right now.

[thebrainfollower]

Okay thanks for clearing that up to me Jimmy Redman. I get it now. I don't like it but I get it. Charlotte is already not over at all with the crowds. Making her totally dependent on her dad for heat and keeping her spot is a long term career killer.

[Alucard]

In their match at TLC, Charlotte taunted the crowd mocking a "we want paige" chant while she had her in a hold. Not that anyone was chanting that, but an obvious heel move if that's not supposed to be the dynamic.