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Fixing the Diva's Division


Mad Dog

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I think all the women Sek mentioned as in the game were on the main roster when they were making the game cuts, no? Emma was teaming with Santino for awhile. Eva Marie was "working" matches & botching the DDT. I mean Layla is on there & she's not been on TV for awhile.

 

But aren't members of the NXT roster in the game this time around too, like Finn Balor? Because THEN the exclusion of Sasha, Becky & Charlotte looks REAL shitty.

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So Paige heel turn helps things along greatly you all agree? She's wayyyy too annoying to be face. Good to see Natalya also

 

Wish the crowd would react to things correctly though. Where do all these Bella fans come from that they still get a pop and why is that the only audible reaction? Paige got a cheer later on in her segment too. People suck.

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As I posted elsewhere about their exclusion from

2k16 being ridiculous:

All the demand you need to know is that the NXT audience, by and large, love the Women's division. The Women's title is probably more important than the NXT Championship in the eyes of most, and if that doesn't say something about how completely fucking ass-backwards the line of thinking that allows Baron "where do I put my arms" Corbin to get a slot but not Sasha "possibly the best pound-for-pound talent under contract right now" Banks? Ugh...

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Also showing how weird their choices of NXT talent are, other Sirs Not Appearing In This Film: Samoa Joe, Kendrick, Rhyno, Albertensai, and Dusty are all AWOL. (Regal's there, but he's bizarrely available only in his Lord Steven gimmick from WCW.) Yet when it comes to including old veterans, random-ass choices from Mikey Whipreck to Billy Gunn (without Road Dogg!) to Ultimate Fighting Machine KAMA to General Adnan (?!?!?) are damn sure on the roster. Whoever decided who goes into this game must've decided the non-current-main-roster choices by blindly throwing darts at a wall with pictures of the entire roster going back to 1987.

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I don't think it's a great idea, I think it would be tough to practically execute and I am not sure it would work. But for completely selfish and irrational reasons, I would love some type of copy of Orphan Black with one of the women playing 5-6 completely different wrestlers with the storyline being that they were cloned years ago in a military experiment and somehow all ended up in WWE.

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I genuinely enjoy Bayley. I feel like I have watched her journey in NXT & followed along as she has improved. Culminating in her winning the NXT Women's Championship. That was fun to follow as a fan.

I like that she seems to be a life long fan. I like that despite being a beautiful woman with a great body, she doesn't dress to accentuate it & actually wrestles while covered up. I like that she is fun & can be a positive female role model to young girls. A demographic that WWE never really targets.

Whenever I feel excited for her in WWE however, I just think back to how WWE treated Molly Holly. Molly was a same way. Nice girl, very pretty, good worker. WWE shaved her head, mad fun of her for being "fat", insulted her & made her the heel for being a virgin & clowned her for not wearing thongs all the time with her ass hanging out, like Lita or Trish.

Even if we're supposed to be in a new era of women's wrestling in WWE, it doesn't feel like it. The women are all treating each other like the same jealous, catty characters as ever. Nikki was the champion for a long time & was basically wearing a wrestling outfit equivalent to what you would see in the Lingerie Bowl. Charlotte wrestles with her whole ass out. Paige is trying every week to make her cleavage bigger & bigger. It's just ridiculous.

It's sending the wrong message.

At this point, "Revolution" or not, I'm waiting for Eva Marie to win the Divas Championship & bring back Bra & Panties matches, like Sable. It doesn't really feel like we're that far from it, sadly.

Poor Bayley. Please don't leave NXT.

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Even women who don't dress as provocative as the ones mentioned have issues, as last night saw Brie working in pants cut so low she had plumber's crack for half the match.

 

 

Bryan and Dave were going on and on how Bayley has something special and WWE can't mess it up. Considering her character is being the nice girl, she seems more doomed than anyone coming out of NXT since the writing team doesn't seem to be able to do any storyline for women other than "nasty bitches who hate each other".

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The description of Paige as a "force of personaility" in her turn the other night is accurate, but also shows the big problem they're going to have in making sure she gets the right reactions. Namely that the faces she's just turned on are pretty much lacking in that department. As able as Charlotte and (especially) Becky are in ring, they've not really connected with the audience, and especially not as much as Paige, who is arguably the most over face in the divas division (Banks comes close, but isn't supposed to be a face). It doesn't help that the points she was making are, rightly or wrongly, points the crowd will agree with. Becky IS largely irrelevant, Summer HAS gone from wrestling to catfighting with Lana over men. How much influence John Cena had over Nikki Bella's title reign is unknown, but a large part of the audience will also believe that's the case, especially as Total Divas ensures that even the casual fan will know about their relationship. The fact Paige left to cheers instead of boos isn't surprising.

 

It actually reminds me of 12 months ago at Survivor Series, where Paige was on a heel team against 4 utter no-mark faces who the crowd didn't care about (as I recall, Emma/Fox/Naomi/Natalya) and, even before she was left in a 4-1 situation, the crowd were cheering for her.

 

I mean Layla is on there & she's not been on TV for awhile.

She's actually retired, which makes this even more ridiculous.

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I only saw part of the "pipe bomb" promo, but totally agree that if this is their attempt at turning Paige heel, they have once again overbooked what should be a really simple story.

 

Charlotte won the title. The crowd liked it. She's a face. Paige is jealous, she attacks Charlotte. She is now heel, even if she's justified and the crowd isn't yet hating her. Then, next week, you have Paige bring up the nepotism, maybe even spit or slap Ric in the face. The crowd loves Ric and now they have reason #2 to dislike Paige.

 

I know the WWE loves their "shades of grey" characters, but if you're building a division from scratch - which is essentially what the WWE is doing when 30% of your active female characters are relatively recent NXT call-ups that are unknown to a sizable part of the audience - you need clear good guys and bad guys. This isn't just a Paige problem either - I think Sunday night showed that Nikki Bella, when in clear cut heel role, can be pretty darn good. Unfortunately, her feuds with Paige and AJ weren't scripted that way. At one point, several months ago, she basically cut her own pipe bomb promo, breaking the 4th wall by confidently expressing how hard she works, how much she loves the business, how she doesn't care that she's not "different" or "indie" like AJ and Paige, etc. etc. that was practically cribbed word-for-word from her boyfriend's playbook. Throw in the fact that, on Total Divas, all the girls are depicted as likable (or, at least, as characters you "love to hate," and therefor, like).

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The problem goes back to multiple former WWE writers stating that when it came to the women, their character development began and ended at "all women hate each other". I'm not going to pretend it's the main issue with the division, but you're never going to get women's wrestling seen anywhere at the level it should be if deep down they're all just a bunch of high school girls fighting over who gets to be queen bee.

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Well it is wrestling a program based on conflict, it would be pretty weird if everyone liked each other. I don't see a situation where you have one outsider in a field of 3 teams (2 of which have no internal issues) to flip out and go against the grain. Why should any of them get along when they have a singular goal of winning the Diva's title? What does Alicia Fox get out of being with the Bella Twins anyway?

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I'm not going to pretend it's the main issue with the division, but you're never going to get women's wrestling seen anywhere at the level it should be if deep down they're all just a bunch of high school girls fighting over who gets to be queen bee.

 

The most successful feud in the history of women's wrestling was a school bully picking on another girl.

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