Diva Destruction

It's no secret that WWE's Diva division has taken some massive blows over the last 12 months, big hitters have either packed their bags and quit, or been released. Around 6-7 years ago the Divas division was huge and in full flow, the likes of Trish Stratus, Lita, Mickie James, Torrie Wilson, Candice Michelle, Victoria, Maria and Ashley were all (at times) main eventing Raw or SmackDown and were having tremendous feuds and even better matches. The whole Trish/Mickie feud in 2006 was at times taking the main spots on Raw sometimes over John Cena and Triple H, but nowadays the Divas division has whithered and is almost dead, lying in the dirt just begging to be put out of it's memory by the ruthless Lord McMahon. Sometimes none of the Divas are even featured on Raw and Smackdown in one week, and when they are featured they get very little airtime, I think the longest Divas match I've seen in the past year is about 7 minutes. With Wrestlemania just around the corner I'm actually worried about what WWE are going to do for the Divas match, I imagine they'll throw together a Kaitlyn vs Tamina or Layla match with no build up whatsoever and no doubt Kaitlyn will come out on top, and 70% of the crowd will use it as a bathroom break. 

The problem is not with the current crop of Divas, some of them are really great wrestlers, and some of them can be good draws, but we all know what WWE are like in recognizing top Diva talent. With the major exception of their golden generation in the mid-2000's WWE's creative team has always blew it when it came to recognizing top Diva talent, remember Gail Kim? Or Jazz? Or even Mickie James and Victoria. Of course they were all pushed at one point but no Diva has ever been given the chance to excel to the levels of the likes of Trish and Lita, arguably the two greatest female wrestlers of all time. The funny thing is they obviously had a huge amount of wrestling talent by the time they both reached their peak, but what takes you by surprise about them both is that they were both brought in to be managers, and were never intended to be the top female stars in the company, to the point where they both main-evented Raw in an epic match. In my opinion WWE has let many of it's top female stars walk out or mishandled them majorly in recent times, the current treatment of Natalya is beyond a joke. 

Natalya is one of the few Divas that are part of the huge wrestling families around the WWE, Natalya of course is part of the Hart family and in my estimate should be the top heel Diva and the current Divas champion, instead she's stuck being a valet with the f***ing Great Khali and Hornswoggle, two people who shouldn't even be in the company. I have nothing whatsoever against Kailtyn, in fact I'm a big fan of hers, but Natalya should be the top Diva and pushing to achieve the greatness of Trish and Lita. But recently the departures of the likes of Eve Torres, Beth Phoenix, Maryse and even Kelly Kelly has left the Divas division so thin that it might as well not even be there, put it this way; if the Divas division was scrapped and the Divas were released, many of you wouldn't even notice. We're now stuck with the likes of Kaitlyn, AJ, Tamina, Layla, Natalya, Alicia Fox, Rosa Mendes, and Aksana...that's it! Out of those 8, only 4 wrestle regularly, and only those 4 are contenders for the Divas title...it's sickening! 

The problem is that none of the current Divas are ever going to ascend to the ranks of Trish Stratus and Lita, none of them, not because they can't, because there are a few that I think could headline the company in the way Trish and Lita did, definitely the likes of Natalya, Kailtyn and AJ could be top Divas, but AJ doesn't even wrestle anymore. The thing is is that (just like the male roster) there is tons of talent down in Florida in NXT, the likes of Paige, Summer Rae and Charlotte (Ric Flair's daughter) are all tremendous talents who, given the size of the current pool of top Divas, should really be knocking on the doors of Raw and Smackdown...wait, scratch that, smashing the doors down with an axe. Paige in particular is the one that strikes everyone who knows her as the most likely to be a success in WWE, but given the handling of other hyped up female wrestlers, the likes of Gail Kim, Mickie James and Jazz, WWE are more likely to mess up her chances of being the top Diva, rather than believe her hype and push her. But for people who don't know Paige, she's a young British wrestler, born into a wrestling family who worked in the British indies, and believe the hype, she IS that good. 

WWE just need to realise what the have in Paige, Natalya, Tamina, Aksana, and others, but in my estimate, it's likely the won't, and they'll blow it like they have with the rest of them. One can only wait, hope and find out happens when it happens, unfortunately...but who knows? Maybe the Divas division will make a huge comeback this year much like the tag-team division did last year, we can hope,

Time for me to leave you,
Thanks,
Andrew.