by Erin Anderson
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

The women of WWE has ceased to be a second-rate sideshow attraction in the company.

"Well, duh," you're probably thinking. The women have been fighting over the re-instated women's belt since Survivor Series over two years ago, and most of those bouts have been in "normal" matches as opposed to the T&A variety. But giving the women airtime every week and matches on the pay-per-views does not necessarily make for an exciting or even worthwhile division to the company. So what does, then? More on that later.

First, a bit of history for those who dismiss my statement. It started at Survivor Series 2001, the pay-per-view that ended WCW once and for all. The show was notable for the demise of several WCW belts, but it also created one that hadn't been seen or legitimately contested for in months. The women's championship had been non-existent earlier in the year after Chyna left with the belt, but was being brought back in a Six-Pack Challenge featuring Lita, Jacqueline, Ivory, Molly, Jazz, and Trish Stratus. Trish was the one who came out with the title, despite being the only competitor in the match without any wrestling ability to her credit. Things should have gone downhill from there.

For a short time, they did. Stacy Keibler, a diva with even less wrestling talent than the current champion, challenged Trish to a variety of T&A matches for the title, most notably in a Gravy Bowl match on the Thanksgiving edition of that year's SmackDown! She lost every single one, and in the process caused the average fan to associate the belt with nothing more than an excuse to see a diva in her underwear. The situation became worse when yet another non-wrestler, Terri, challenged Trish to a title match that wasn't a match at all: a wet t-shirt contest.

Female wrestling fans everywhere were burying their faces in their hands. Just when we thought women's "wrestling" had hit rock bottom, Terri handed us a shovel.

But in thirty seconds, the mood suddenly changed: Jazz appeared out of nowhere and DDT'ed Trish right out of her sparkly pink boots. It pissed off both the crowd and Jerry Lawler, and the message was clear: no more of that bra-and-panties-wet-t-shirt-paddle-on-a-pole bullshit.

From then on, the women often got title matches on WWE pay-per-views. Sometimes the matches sucked, and sometimes they were quite good: either way, the fans didn't care much. Trish's drastic in-ring improvement helped some, and continues to help her now, as she routinely adds new moves to her repertoire. Still, the fans didn't really give a shit, especially when Lita was put out of commission for over a year with a neck injury and Jazz, one of the best female workers in the company, tore her ACL.

Enter Victoria: an attractive, talented woman who brought with her a physical side of the divas that the fans had never seen before and a legitimately entertaining psycho-bitch gimmick. For the first time in three years, WWE had a hardcore match featuring the divas, and followed up with a "Chicago Streetfight" in the following months.

Enter Gail Kim: an attractive, barely talented woman who won the belt in her first WWE match. She predictably bombed, but her reign was notable in that she lost her title to Molly in a match that was the main event of RAW. It was followed by an interview to close out the show, but a women's match began at 10:45 on RAW. Unheard of. Better yet, the ever-talented Molly walked away with the belt, and Jerry Lawler finally dropped the "She's a prude" act and acknowledged that Molly isn't a fat-ass after all.

Now with the title on a competent wrestler not named Trish Stratus, everything steamrolled from there. The return of Lita made for a couple of terrific diva tag-team matches, one of which stole the show on RAW from the men and got the loudest reaction of the night. Suddenly, the fans seemed to care.

The females had been capable of good matches for quite a while at this point, but never any compelling angles to take part in. Lita's return provided the opportunity: for the first time, a woman was given a storyline that paralleled that of any high-profile man in the company. Lita was on the shelf with a serious injury, and is fighting her way through many obstacles to regain the championship. Sound familiar? Big-shots like Kurt Angle and Triple H have gone the same route to tremendous success, and now the fans finally have a women's feud that isn't boiled down to petty jealousy between the divas. This time, it's all about the title, one that has been held for several months by a dominant Molly.

And instead of giving Lita the title in her first pay-per-view shot since her injury like everyone expected, she was shut down by Molly. The women's belt is no longer being tossed around carelessly like a meaningless prop: forcing Lita to chase the title for months only places more importance on the championship, and her eventual title win will be that much more meaningful because of it. Molly's hatred of Lita may be rooted in jealousy, but this time she has a plausible reason for it, and one that has worked for the men: Lita receives all the fanfare while the champion is ignored.

But through all of this, the women's division has existed in a nutshell and never ventured out. Meaningful storylines not involving the belt simply didn't exist. Perhaps this is the fault of the writers, or merely because there weren't enough women on the show capable of pulling off good backstage segments.

But that changed a few months ago with the birth of RAW's Love Rhombus. It may have sounded bad in theory, but what resulted between Lita, Christian, Trish, and Jericho turned out to be one of the most entertaining and well-written storylines of the year. Suddenly, there were two high-profile angles involving the women on RAW (Lita's title chase and "The Bet"), one of them not involving the title at all but still capturing the fans' interest.

Other signs are pointing to the creative team finally figuring out how to handle the divas. We saw a solid women's cage match last week with tremendous crowd heat. Rico suplexing Trish in the mixed tag match on Monday didn't end the match; previously, anytime a woman bumped for a man on a move as simple as a clothesline, she sold it as if she were dead. Shaniqua is being portrayed as a powerful woman that could kick anyone's ass regardless of gender. Nidia's "blindness" has considerably heated up Jamie Noble's feud with Tajiri.

The women are finally being handled as important players in WWE, rather than a self-contained part of the show used to cool off the crowd before the main event of a pay-per-view. Good for you, WWE. It's about damn time. All you need now is a muzzle for Jerry Lawler, and all will be right with the world.
  

E-MAIL ERIN
BROWSE THE BROAD'S ARCHIVES

Erin Anderson is an Atlanta native and a student at Georgia State University. Since writing about wrestling didn't go over too well with her English professors, she vents here at Online Onslaught.

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