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"Kawada Komments - Women's Wrestling"

Even with the rumours that *good old* J.R (i.e retarded hick boy) might be leaving the RAW commentary team and being replaced by Mike Goldberg from UFC (which would then give the interesting scenario of Joey Styles maybe taking the hot seat there seeing as his contract only extends to professional wrestling) i still felt women's wrestling was the right subject to write about this week if only because we did actually have a 3 on 2 bra and panties match on RAW and at the moment the rumours about J.R are just that, rumours.

So yes this week, coming under the incredibly critical eye of the forums resident Yankee Doodle Kawada, are the women of the sport we like so much.


Other than Japan, women's wrestling hasn't been that big over here in the west. It is seen more of a side show, a break from the action so the males in the audience can have something nice to look at for 5 or so minutes before the sweaty men come back out again. Women are the side piece, the ones who accompany the male stars or get in the ring to fill 5 minutes in a show because the booker couldn't think of anything else. They're usually only there for sexual appeal, attracting that all important 18-49 male demographic each wrestling organisation strives so hard to obtain.

In other words, the average fan cares about as much for the actual wrestling in a women's match as much as they care about another exciting masterlock challenge.................and thank god for the WWE they do.

I'll get to the atrocious WWE women's roster in a bit but right now let me take you back when women's wrestling at least had some credibility in the States. Back in the days of people like Donna Christanello, Barbie Dahl, Gladys Gillem, Penny Banner and yes of course Mae Young and Moolah. These women knew how to wrestle and fight and put on matches that weren't botch fests and were actually enjoyable to watch. They were beginning to smash open the doors that had been previously closed and made promoters and the public actually take notice of women's wrestling and think to themselves *hey these women can actually wrestle some* and think of them as something more than just a pretty thing on the end of a male wrestler's arm. It was quite a golden age of women's wrestling.

And then Andy Kaufman came along.

The star of Taxi and Saturday Night Live began wrestling women in 1979 and pretty much made a laughing stock of women everywhere with his act of clowning around and embarrasing them and became the first ever inter-gender wrestling champion and retired having never lost a match. It pretty much put women's wrestling back to square one at trying to be respected.

Then in the mid to late 80's G.L.O.W (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) arrived on tv. A real hit and miss affair that offered some good matches but was mostly a camp, over the top affair that was women's wrestling equivalent to Graham Norton. To its credit though it did get people back interested in women's wrestling and gave decent performers like Ivory a place to show off their skills while wrestlers like Candi Devine, Sherri Martel and Wendi Richter enjoyed the revitalised interest people had in women's wrestling as it began to build back it's shattered reputation.

In the early 90's women's wrestling was going pretty strong with competitors like Alundra Blayze and Brandi Alexander locking up, or in Francine's case, fighting :-D. However Alundra Blayze would be responsible for starting the countdown to the end of women's wrestling in the west.

Originally brought in by Vince to kickstart a women's division to capitalise on the interest she eventually got disenchanted by the standard of competition in the WWF and in November 1995 showed up on Nitro and publicly threw the WWF women's title in a trash can, an incident that some people believe is why Vince decided to screw Bret in Montreal. This incident not only discredited Vince and the WWF but also the women's title and women's wrestling as a whole itself, a blatant act of disrespect and distain shown towards the biggest company in the industry's belt and therefore the most important belt a female wrestler can hold. (Like Joey Styles said *i hate to say it, but it's the truth*)

Vince tried to carry on with wrestlers like Jazz, Molly Holly and Victoria but it was evident women wrestlers were becoming replaced by *divas* A step up from valet's like Miss Elizabeth but still nowhere near as good as the women of yesteryear or the women who were and are currently wrestling in Japan and local indy fed's (Alexis Laree, Gail Kim and Victoria exceptions)

Then came the darkest day of women's wrestling, 8th July 2002 - The day Women's wrestling officially died and what little credibility was left was wiped away, in the Western world anyway. Just in case some of you don't remember that date let me take you back

Bradshaw & Stratus vs Nowinski and Gayda. Ring any bells? Probably the most embarrasing, worst, god awful match in the history of wrestling. Virtually everything the two women did resulted in a botch, from a botched drop toe hold, a botched irish whip and a botched finish where it took Jackie about 6 months before realising she was meant to fall down after a top rope bulldog (and even then fell backwards instead of the more logical forwards direction) leaving everyone either in a state of shock or fits of laughter. These 2 had managed to do in 4 minutes what it took Kaufman 4 years to do and to a much larger degree then he could ever have hoped to achieve, a complete embarrasment to women wrestlers everywhere.

It's little wonder that in the last couple of years Vince has decided to scrap the idea of proper wrestling matches and gone for matches which include - chocolate pudding matches, bra and panties matches and paddle on a pole matches and of course the horrible diva contests.

Luckily though places like ROH haven't given up on women's wrestling and still put on good exciting matches and of course anyone after some good female wrestling action only has to look to Japan to see how it's done. Wrestlers like Manami Toyota, Ayako Hamada, Aja Kong, Bull Nakano, Devil Masami, Megumi Kudo, Sugar Sato, Sumie Sakai etc etc show us it is very possible for women to entertain us in the squared circle and put on 3 to 5 star matches that put most of the male superstars of the WWE to shame.

So for those who actually expect women who are in a wrestling company to actually wrestle instead of doing what any low rate xxx-rated tv channel does far better it may look like women's wrestling died during that night in July 2002. However it's still going strong thanks to our Japanese cousins and there's always stars out on the indy circuit to see and who knows, with TNA signing Gail Kim we could see an influx of female WRESTLERS into mainstream western tv again, which is extremely possible what with GAEA closing and it could soon rise from the ashes. Here's hoping.


Next week - The commentary teams get Kriticised

Kawada wrote:
> Nooooo, i'm being deadly serious ......
>
> *sarcasm detector explodes*
>
>
> Dammit GP you told me this new batch had a 1 year guarantee

Ah that reminds me of 2 great Simpsons clips.

sorry

*sighs* Geez, just go will you.

i hope to god you know i was joking?

Curses, ah well with the amount of pressure i put them under it'd be no surprise if actual properly crafted machines exploded

Yeah, a guarantee that they would explode within a year. It's all written on the ridiculously small print, which would probably have been incinerated by now...

Nooooo, i'm being deadly serious ......

*sarcasm detector explodes*


Dammit GP you told me this new batch had a 1 year guarantee

Kawada wrote:
> and i'd be extremely terrified ..............
your being sarcastic,arent you?:)

and i'd be extremely terrified ..............

im actually 11 very metal.
and anyway,why would i lie about that.
i mean if i lied,i would have said i was a wrestler my self and i was going to go get him,now wouldnt I?:)