Friday, August 28, 2015

The Divas Revolution

For almost a month now, one of the major storylines on WWE television has been the "Divas Revolution", which is the phrase they've been pushing to describe the feud between three teams of the main roster's best divas. The teams are, of course, Team Bella, consisting of Divas Champion Nikki Bella, her twin sister Brie Bella, and longtime main roster diva Alicia Fox. Challenging them are Team PCB, Paige, Charlotte, and Becky Lynch, along with Team B.A.D (Beautiful And Dangerous), that being made up of former NXT Women's Champion Sasha Banks, Naomi, and Tamina Snuka. When this angle first began, Stephanie McMahon brought out Charlotte and Becky Lynch on RAW to join Paige in her struggle against Team Bella, then Sasha Banks was introduced to join Naomi and Tamina. The first segment with the much-anticipated debut of three of NXT's best wrestlers caused plenty of buzz and excitement initially, as is to be expected. But since then, not only has the excitement died down, but the overall feeling amongst fans has become that this is far from a Revolution. In fact, most seem to think that it's just the same thing they'd been doing with divas, but dragged out to longer, and therefore less enjoyable segments on Monday Night RAW. These segments and matches have been a point of controversy in the last few weeks, causing a rift between fans who participate in random chants during divas matches and those who are strongly against the assertion that paying fans should be allowed to do whatever they want at wrestling shows. While I'm not necessarily going to argue on that point, I am going to try and dissect the issues with the Divas Revolution, as well as try to explain, whether it's to the readers or just myself, what exactly has gone wrong and why it has done so.

As I mentioned previously, all three of Becky Lynch, Charlotte, and Sasha Banks are from NXT. As I'm sure almost everybody reading this is aware, NXT is WWE's developmental system. Almost like minor league wrestling, despite the fact that they are bigger than almost every wrestling company not named WWE. One of the major things that fans revere NXT for is their treatment of the women's division, something that has been seriously neglected by WWE for nearly the entire existence of the company. Rather than seeing great female athletes put on phenomenal wrestling matches, WWE spent 20 years having these women strip down to lingerie and wrestle in pools of mud. Although there was a period where this halted, for the most part, this is how WWE viewed and marketed their female talent, otherwise known on TV as "divas". NXT, however, has a much more niche audience than WWE. Typically, a NXT viewer is a more hardcore wrestling fan. Somebody who has watched for a long time in most instances, and somebody who is at least fairly familiar with wrestling tropes and traditions. So to those fans, most of whom have seen fantastic women's wrestling elsewhere in the world, watching these women put on fantastic matches under the WWE umbrella was an incredible breath of fresh air. It came to the point where Sasha Banks was possibly the most over person on NXT's roster, which included names like Neville, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, and current NXT Champion Finn Balor. The main example of the NXT crowd's immense appreciation and adoration for the women's division at NXT came after Sasha Banks defeated Becky Lynch for the NXT Women's Title at Takeover: Unstoppable. The crowd watched Becky Lynch, who had been through a brutally physical match and came up just short, with tears in her eyes, get back to her feet, selling the damage that had been inflicted upon her arm throughout the match. They proceeded to sing her theme song. It could be argued that Becky was the fourth most popular woman at NXT at the time. THAT is how over the women were at Full Sail.

NXT has never had a bra and panties match. The people that fill Full Sail twice a month for a round of tapings have been given no reason to come to expect degradation and objectification of women in that ring. Meanwhile, WWE used bra and panties matches often enough in the mid-2000s that the match type found its way into multiple WWE-licensed video games, and was even one of the selling points of a few of them. Therefore, the fans that have been watching WWE long enough to remember them are rolling their eyes at the thought of Nikki Bella having a 15-minute title defense against Charlotte, because they'd rather just see Nikki's Instagram come to life right before them in the middle of the ring. And while they may not be outright chanting for the divas to get naked, they're certainly not paying any attention to anything the divas do short of undressing one another. This is one of the major issues I see as far as crowd reception of the Divas Revolution goes.

However, WWE hasn't done themselves any favors in the way the crowd is receiving their Revolution. With three teams of three, they have completely handcuffed themselves in the way they can book this. Having to fit nine divas onto the show every night has led to multiple tag team matches, and everybody trading wins every week. Therefore, nobody has really emerged as a contender for Nikki Bella's Divas Championship, and she hasn't defended it in nearly two months. Without a Championship to compete over, the Revolution simply comes off as meaningless. This could have been avoided by spreading out the debuts of the three divas, and not tossing them into stables right off the bat. However, it did seem like last week's RAW segments were their way of trying to launch someone from PCB into a title match with Nikki Bella, most likely at Night of Champions. But then, because of how they set up this feud, Team B.A.D was left off the show entirely, which ultimately sabotaged the 6-person tag between Team Bella and Team PCB with chants of "We Want Sasha". Furthermore, with the exception of post-show Fallout Interviews and appearances on commentary, Monday Night was the first time since the angle began that any of these women got an extended amount of time to speak on the mic. And although I wouldn't say PCB exactly made the most of that opportunity, it was good for the direction of the feud and the progression towards a Divas Championship match for NOC.

I don't know what WWE is planning on doing to combat the crowd rejection and disinterest in the Divas Revolution, but I can only hope it isn't just pulling the angle altogether and going back to square one with it. When the #GiveDivasAChance movement first began on twitter, I said that I didn't really care for the main roster divas as they stood at that point, but would fully support the movement for the future. And now, with my favorite wrestler, Sasha Banks, most likely being phased out of NXT soon and moving exclusively to the main roster, I wouldn't be able to handle her in three minute matches every week, getting minimal opportunities to speak and display her brilliant character. But, with how WWE works, should the crowd continue to not be receptive to the increased screen time of these women, that's probably where they would be headed. So, for my sake, WWE, please figure out a solution to what is being done wrong. If they could get me from the point where I changed the channel or went to the bathroom during divas segments to the point where my favorite wrestler is a woman, then they could get some crusty old man to at least stop thirsting over Nikki Bella's boobs and pay attention to the wrestling presented to him. But until they do that, The Revolution will be... complained about online.

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