Week 1: SkeptiKal -versus- SavageTaker

[Mr. TM]

Do Divas need characters?

SavageTaker is the home debater, he gets to choose which side of the debate he is on first, but he has 24 hours.

Remember to read the rules. This thread is only for the debaters.

 

[SK]

SK my side of the debate is that Diva's do need characters.

Diva’s don’t need characters, and there’s one obvious argument for this here, this is that women do not draw in wrestling. Say what you want, say that people watch the TNA knockouts, but the truth is that women’s wrestling is not important enough to warrant them having air time and characters developed. Giving the Diva’s characters would be a huge waste of time, the Diva’s are fine without characters. Now I’m not saying scrap the women’s division here, because women should wrestle, as it breaks up the shows by having something different and gives the males in attendance something to look at, but giving these Diva’s characters would not make people care, would not increase ratings and would just take time away from male wrestlers who need it much more as this is why most people watch wrestling, for the male wrestling and gimmicks/ entertainment.

It’s all besides the point anyway. What Diva could actually pull off a decent gimmick? None, you know why? Because there are not enough quality female wrestlers to have good matches that the fans would enjoy. One Diva could pull off the best gimmick ever and be decent in ring, but if she only has one or two Diva’s to compete with, the matches and feuds would get boring, displeasing fans, whilst taking up time the male wrestlers could have had for exciting fresh feuds.

Women do not draw. This is why women are never on the main event of the card, their matches barely get promoted, and the only matches they really have on weekly shows are 6 diva tag matches. This is why women should not be given gimmicks, it would be pointless because no matter what gimmick any Diva had, very few people would care, mainly because of the low standard of wrestling and mic work delivered by the Diva’s. This would not change by gving them gimmicks, they might be more interested in a diva’s gimmick, but would ultimately lose interest because the wrestling would not be any better than it is now, which in the end, is what the fans are there to see, wrestling.

In the past we have seen attempts at giving Diva’s gimmicks or stronger characters, and it has nearly always failed or been dragged down by poor wrestling. In recent times we’ve seen; ‘stupid’ Maria, ‘singing’ Jillian, ‘The Glamazon’ Beth Pheonix and ‘the stalker’ Rosa Mendes. All these gimmicks have one thing in common, they failed. People got bored as the divas were boring on the microphone, sloppy in the ring and unable to make the audience love/ hate them. Even the arguably most ‘successful’ of the bunch, Beth Pheonix, was taken off TV by Vince McMahon, because he wanted to focus on a more swimsuit/ attractive feel to the Diva’s division, like the devision is supposed to be. If one man knows what he’s talking about it’s Vince, he has unmatched success in wrestling, and therefore is the most obvious candidate to know what to do with the Diva’s of wrestling.

Audiences in attendance are for the majority males, and males are clearly more interested in seeing males wrestle, as is seen by the cheers and boos of the audience, and the Diva’s are more often than not, met with very very few cheers or boos, because nobody care enough about the Diva’s. Now the owner of a promotion has to satisfy the majority and if male wrestling is what they cheer for, why go against the majority?

The main reason for women in wrestling, is that men like to look at them. This is why 99% of Diva’s are attractive women, wearing skimpy clothes, men at wrestling show are just like other men, they like to watch attractive women, and they obviously like to see women in skimpy clothes rolling around on top of each other. Women’s wrestling is just part of the show, it can be compared to the backstage comedy segments, it breaks up the wrestling so that people get excited for the next match and don’t get bored of watching straight through male wrestling all night.

You can go on any live discussion and see people moaning about Diva matches and calling them toilet breaks. This is because the typical wrestling fan doesn’t really care about women’s wrestling, and the creative team/ owner have to try and please the typical fan, therefore giving Diva’s mic and in ring time, that would be taking away from the male wrestling, which would in turn upset the average fan and affect ratings. Fans at the arenas are the best indicators of what is popular, and the Diva’s are not, no matter who it is. The biggest pops always go to males, this shows what the fans want to see, why would you sacrifice that to give Diva’s gimmicks, which likely wouldn’t work.

At the end of the day the owner of a wrestling promotion would have to make a cost/ reward model, what are the costs of giving Diva’s gimmicks and what are the potential rewards. The costs far outweigh the rewards, here are a few costs;

Costs;

1. Taking away valuable air/ ring time from the male wrestlers, who the fans obviously care more about, shown through merchandise sales, fan reactions and ratings.
2. Wrestling would not in any way be improved for the Diva’s, they would just become sloppy wrestlers with a gimmick.
3. The fans would not want to see female gimmicks, and if pushed too much they may stop watching, leading to decreased merchandise sales, ticket sales, ratings and inevitably profit.
4. Male wrestlrs feeling undervalued and possibly leaving due to having less air time because of giving Diva’s gimmicks.

Diva’s don’t need characters. Women are used in wrestling as eye candy and to break up the show for a toilet/snack break, giving them gimmicks would take time away from the more popular male wrestlers, displease fans, whilst we would still be stuck with the sloppy Diva wrestling which we’ve always had.

 

[SavageTaker]

SavageTaker’s Reasons Why Divas Do Need Characters!​

There’s something wrong with the Divas and there’s a reason why they aren’t taken serious at all. It’s not because they have bad matches, because they’re usually decent and sometimes good. It’s not because of the bikini contests, because they’ve had those since the Attitude Era and during the same that the division was taken serious. It’s also not the fact that a lot of them are pretty faces that can’t wrestle as well as some of the other divas or another division that I will not name but you probably know who they are. What is wrong with the divas division and why they are no longer taken serious is because they have no characters. I wouldn’t say any of them except maybe 1 or 2 have characters; they’re all basically the same just with a different names and a different face.

If there’s something I have learned in over a decade of watching wrestling is that I will remember wrestlers (male and female) with characters more than I remember wrestlers that lack character. It’s very rare that I remember someone who didn’t have a character at all. Whether a wrestler had a ridiculous character or a good character, it makes me remembered them nonetheless. When I look at the diva’s division I sometimes do not remember the names of some of the divas. I swear, there are times I don’t even remember who the Women’s or Diva’s champions are. This is because they don’t have anything in particular that will help me remember who they are. There are also times when a diva will come out and I question who they are. I know that I’m not losing my memory but I do know that the fact that they don’t have characters does not make me remember them.

Characters in my opinion are good for a multitude of reasons. I will however focus on 3 different reasons why it would help the divas a lot.

Firstly, characters would help fans tell the divas apart. Like I stated earlier, the majority of divas are basically the same just with a different names and a different face. If you throw a character on a diva, people are going to know who that diva is. For example, if there’s a diva with a zombie character and 10 who are just their normal selves, which diva is the one you’re going to be able to tell is different than all of the other diva? The answer would be the one with the zombie character. Adding a character to a diva adds more depth to them and helps fans tell them apart from one another.

Secondly, divas with characters will help fans remember who they are. If you give a diva a character that people will remember such as a zombie, then people will be able to remember who they are. Being able to be remembered is vital in professional wrestling because injuries do happen and there are times when divas can go for weeks and sometimes months without being on TV at all. There are times when divas return and fans don’t remember who they are so they don’t give them a reaction at all. With a character this would be the complete opposite. If a diva that had the character of a zombie and then they were left off of television for a couple of months it would help people remember who they are, so that once they return people will say “Hey, that was the diva that was a zombie.” Having a character simply helps fans remember who the divas are.

Last but certainly not least, having a character can hide the negatives and let the positives shine. It has been debated for a long time now that Hulk Hogan didn’t need to use multiple wrestling maneuvers in order to shine as a wrestler. Hogan wasn’t a limited wrestler; he just decided to use a limited amount of moves in his matches. He didn’t need to use a multitude of moves while he was playing his character. The same could apply to the divas. I am by no means saying that a diva is going to be a megastar like Hogan because they start using a limited amount of moves, but what I am saying is that if they hide their negatives then they can let the positives shine like Hogan was able to do. Also I am not saying that Hogan has negatives so please do not misinterpret what I am trying to say here. Simply, with a character added to them, a diva could hide their negatives and let the positives shine if the character would permit them to do that, like the character Hulk Hogan played did. Having characters would simply let the diva show their positives and let the negatives they have hide.

In summation, giving a character to a diva would be great. They are proven draws as men want to see them, but with a character men will still want to see them but there would also be other people who would want to see them therefore increasing how much they draw. Like I said, there are probably a multitude of reasons why divas should have characters but I listed 3 reasons which I find to be the best reasons why it would be justifiable to give the divas characters. The first reason was that it would help fans tell them all apart from each other. The second reason why I think divas should be given characters is because it helps fans remember them, and my last reason is because by having a character it would allow their positives as wrestlers shine and the negatives hide. Overall, I think it would be justifiable to give characters to divas because of the few reasons I gave.

 

[SavageTaker]

Diva’s don’t need characters, and there’s one obvious argument for this here, this is that women do not draw in wrestling.

I disagree with women not drawing. They might never be draws like Hulk Hogan but they’re still draws nonetheless. You said it yourself; right now they are used as eye candy. Men like seeing them at the arenas and so do men on TV. It would probably be the same way if they had a gimmick, as long as they have the sex appeal.

Say what you want, say that people watch the TNA knockouts,

I don’t want to get too much into the knockouts because this is supposed to be about the divas, however I feel the need to say something regard them. The TNA knockouts are draws and there have been many times already in the past year or two were they have drawn higher numbers than their male counterparts, therefore proving that people do care about women’s wrestling. Notice the biggest difference between the knockouts and the divas is that that most knockouts have gimmicks. If they have gimmicks and draw high numbers for TNA why wouldn’t the divas be able to succeed with gimmicks? I’m not trying to say that a diva would be able to draw higher than John Cena like the knockouts have been able to draw higher than Kurt Angle, arguably their top star.

but the truth is that women’s wrestling is not important enough to warrant them having air time and characters developed.

But it is and the TNA knockouts have proven that. If the knockouts could do it then so could the divas.

Giving the Diva’s characters would be a huge waste of time,

Why? By adding characters to the divas it gives them depth, something they are lack of.

the Diva’s are fine without characters.

But they could be doing better with characters.

Now I’m not saying scrap the women’s division here, because women should wrestle, as it breaks up the shows by having something different and gives the males in attendance something to look at,

So you admit they are draws because people do want to see them? And yes it does give them something different to watch so that they don’t get burnt out of males wrestling for 2+ hours. But with characters, the divas could make the fans want to watch them even more and they can attract people who don’t usually watch them.

but giving these Diva’s characters would not make people care,

How so? When Vince gave Hulk Hogan his character people cared. When Undertaker was given his character people cared. When Ultimate Warrior was given his character people cared. Why would people not care if the divas were given good characters?

would not increase ratings

But it would. Finally, fans would be given a reason to care about the divas and it would attract people who normally flip the channels when the divas are on. If given good characters then it would make fans want to see them and what they do.

and would just take time away from male wrestlers who need it much more as this is why most people watch wrestling, for the male wrestling and gimmicks/ entertainment.

Doesn’t this apply for the divas too? There are male wrestlers who don’t even get reactions yet are featured on TV weekly over divas who do get reactions. There are male wrestlers who take up TV time that could be used for the divas who people actually care about.

It’s all besides the point anyway. What Diva could actually pull off a decent gimmick? None,

How do you know this? Unless you’ve actually seen them try to pull off a decent gimmick then it’s not fair to judge whether they can or they cannot pull it off. At least by giving them a gimmick they are giving them a chance, if they fail then they stop the gimmick and no harm is done.

you know why? Because there are not enough quality female wrestlers to have good matches that the fans would enjoy.

Since when do you need to be a quality wrestler to pull off a gimmick? Anyways, you don’t need to be a quality wrestler to have matches that fans would enjoy. The Ultimate Warrior wasn’t a quality wrestler yet fans enjoyed his matches. With it a gimmick it allows divas to hide their negatives and let the positives that they have shine.

One Diva could pull off the best gimmick ever and be decent in ring, but if she only has one or two Diva’s to compete with, the matches and feuds would get boring, displeasing fans, whilst taking up time the male wrestlers could have had for exciting fresh feuds.

Have you seen all of the divas try to pull off a gimmick and fail at it? You can’t say that one diva one diva would only have one or two divas to compete with unless you have seen what every diva can do. There are still a few divas who we haven’t seen much of what they can do.

Women do not draw.

Yes they do. They draw when they are wrestlers with gimmicks evident by the TNA knockouts and they draw when they are simply eye candy evident by the WWE’s divas.

This is why women are never on the main event of the card,

Well, they aren’t in that position because their male counterparts draw higher ratings. If women were the bigger rating draws then they’d probably be main eventing since it would get the highest ratings for a show.

their matches barely get promoted,

That’s because there’s no reason for people care about them. With a gimmick added to them then there is a possibility people would care about them and their matches would get promoted.

and the only matches they really have on weekly shows are 6 diva tag matches.

I think this is mostly done to get more people on the show. The more eye candy the better.

This is why women should not be given gimmicks, it would be pointless because no matter what gimmick any Diva had, very few people would care,

This untrue, there have been times that those divas with gimmicks had people cared about them a lot about. Most of the times people don’t care is because the diva didn’t have a good gimmick. With the right gimmick, there would be people who cared about them.

mainly because of the low standard of wrestling and mic work delivered by the Diva’s. This would not change by gving them gimmicks, they might be more interested in a diva’s gimmick, but would ultimately lose interest because the wrestling would not be any better than it is now, which in the end, is what the fans are there to see, wrestling.

Well with a gimmick, the wrestling could be more interesting. By having gimmicks it allows divas to hide their negatives and let the positives shine, it’s all depending on what type of gimmick they play. So the matches would not be the same because they would have to change what they are doing in order to get their gimmick over. Also, there are fans who don’t watch just because of the wrestling but also because they want to be entertained. The divas could deliver entertainment if given a chance with a gimmick.

In the past we have seen attempts at giving Diva’s gimmicks or stronger characters, and it has nearly always failed or been dragged down by poor wrestling.

Poor wrestling does not equal having gimmicks dragged down. If this were the case then The Ultimate Warrior wouldn’t have been as big as he was during his time.

In recent times we’ve seen; ‘stupid’ Maria,

I’ll agree with you on this one but I have to disagree with 2 of your examples.

‘singing’ Jillian,

That gimmick did not fail. Its point was to annoy fans and get them to boo her because of her horrendous singing. I’d say that it worked and it still works when she comes out singing.

‘The Glamazon’ Beth Pheonix

I don’t think this gimmick failed either. The Glamazon’s point was to show she was beautiful but still could wrestle as good as or better than anyone else on the roster of divas. I’d say that it succeeded.

and ‘the stalker’ Rosa Mendes.

Now this one I don’t agree or disagree with. I don’t think we got to see if it could’ve worked because they seem to halt it.

All these gimmicks have one thing in common, they failed.

I agree with only 1 of them, I honestly think that 2 of them didn’t fail and the other left wasn’t given enough time and we didn’t see it enough to judge it properly.

People got bored as the divas were boring on the microphone, sloppy in the ring and unable to make the audience love/ hate them.

Like I said, with two of the gimmicks I think they were able to make audience hate or love them, they were good on the mic because they were able to accomplish what they were supposed to, and because their in-ring work wasn’t sloppy. With the other 2 gimmicks you listed I have to agree with one only and the other we didn’t get to see enough of to judge properly.

Even the arguably most ‘successful’ of the bunch, Beth Pheonix, was taken off TV by Vince McMahon, because he wanted to focus on a more swimsuit/ attractive feel to the Diva’s division,

Well you do know that sometimes there is nothing for them to do on so they take them off of TV? And sometimes they have other things happen that they have to go to. For example Jillian has been grieving the death of her grandfather I believe it was, so she was kept off of TV. Also sometimes they might ask for time off because they were burnt out or because they needed to heal nagging injuries. It might have been possible that Beth was kept off because of the reason you mentioned but there might always be other reasons they are kept off of TV.

like the devision is supposed to be.

It’s not really the only thing it should be. It can still be that but not solely that. It can be many other things and still keep that aspect of it.

If one man knows what he’s talking about it’s Vince, he has unmatched success in wrestling, and therefore is the most obvious candidate to know what to do with the Diva’s of wrestling.

Yes, Vince does know a lot about wrestling but it doesn’t necessarily mean everything he does is right. Now I’m not going to sit here and say I’m right and he’s wrong because he hasn’t exactly tested out the idea of having women with gimmicks to see if it works.

Audiences in attendance are for the majority males, and males are clearly more interested in seeing males wrestle,

What does gender have to do with what interests someone the most? There are lots of males who like who like to see the divas, so I don’t think we should bring in genders into this. Also, not all males are interested in seeing males wrestle. So like I said we shouldn’t bring genders into this because it would be unfair since the majority of fans are males. If the majority were females then the divas would probably be the most popular ones.

as is seen by the cheers and boos of the audience, and the Diva’s are more often than not, met with very very few cheers or boos, because nobody care enough about the Diva’s.

If they are given gimmicks then that could maybe change everything or at least change it drastically.

Now the owner of a promotion has to satisfy the majority and if male wrestling is what they cheer for, why go against the majority?

You’re right they should appeal to the majority of fans but they shouldn’t just appeal to them. If they have time after making sure they’ve appealed to the majority then they should also appeal to the others. Remember, promoters want as many fans as they possibly can get, whether they are in a majority or minority they want them.

The main reason for women in wrestling, is that men like to look at them. This is why 99% of Diva’s are attractive women, wearing skimpy clothes, men at wrestling show are just like other men, they like to watch attractive women, and they obviously like to see women in skimpy clothes rolling around on top of each other. Women’s wrestling is just part of the show, it can be compared to the backstage comedy segments, it breaks up the wrestling so that people get excited for the next match and don’t get bored of watching straight through male wrestling all night.

They can accomplish the same thing and more if they give the divas gimmicks. They will still be hot unless they are made to look ugly, but they can still make sure the divas are hot and that man are looking at them when they have gimmicks.

You can go on any live discussion and see people moaning about Diva matches and calling them toilet breaks.

Well that’s because they don’t have a reason to care about them at all. With a gimmick it could possibly make people care about them and not moan and call their matches “toilet breaks”.

This is because the typical wrestling fan doesn’t really care about women’s wrestling, and the creative team/ owner have to try and please the typical fan, therefore giving Diva’s mic and in ring time, that would be taking away from the male wrestling, which would in turn upset the average fan and affect ratings.

Typical wrestling fans do not care about the divas because they have no gimmicks for fans to possibly care about them. Also, most fans would prefer a divas match over one of the boring male wrestling matches we get. Just because a wrestler is mal it does not mean fans want to see them.

Fans at the arenas are the best indicators of what is popular, and the Diva’s are not, no matter who it is.

Well not really. If fans are giving lackluster shows then does that mean that none of the male wrestlers are popular because no one is reacting to them? It would be a complete different story if a diva had a gimmick, the fans were given a good show, and no one reacted to the divas.
Also, are you going to deny that Trish Stratus or Lita aren’t popular? The “Divas aren’t popular, no matter who they are” argument is very flawed. There are plenty of divas who were and still are popular, please tell me you aren’t denying that?

The biggest pops always go to males, this shows what the fans want to see, why would you sacrifice that to give Diva’s gimmicks,

Not always do the pops go to males. There have been times were some males don’t even get reactions and divas do. Divas are also what fans want to see. Males aren’t the only ones who deliver you know.

which likely wouldn’t work.

Never say Never. I’m sure there are plenty of gimmicks in the past that one would have thought wouldn’t work but they did. You can’t say they wouldn’t work until you see them happen. In pro-wrestling you really cannot say never.

At the end of the day the owner of a wrestling promotion would have to make a cost/ reward model, what are the costs of giving Diva’s gimmicks and what are the potential rewards. The costs far outweigh the rewards, here are a few costs;

Ok, let’s see.

Costs;

1. 
   

   [*]Taking away valuable air/ ring time from the male wrestlers, who the fans obviously care more about, shown through merchandise sales, fan reactions and ratings.

   This is not always the case. Just because a wrestler is male it does not mean that fans will obviously care more about them. There have been times that divas were cared more about than the male wrestlers. Don’t assume that just because a wrestler is male it instantly means they are cared more about. It all depends if they can deliver, which there are some that can’t.
   

   [*]Wrestling would not in any way be improved for the Diva’s, they would just become sloppy wrestlers with a gimmick.

   Most divas aren’t sloppy. Plus just because they get a gimmick it doesn’t mean that they are going to become sloppy workers. This goes back to the hiding the negatives and letting the positives shine. If there are moves that they do that are sloppy then a gimmick allows them to not have to use it and instead they can only use the moves that aren’t sloppy when they perform them. It all just depends on the gimmick they would get if given one.
   
   

   [*]The fans would not want to see female gimmicks, and if pushed too much they may stop watching, leading to decreased merchandise sales, ticket sales, ratings and inevitably profit.

   I don’t know where you got the idea of fans wanting to stop watching because divas are pushed. If they stop watching then they probably weren’t true and real fans to begin with to be honest. I still don’t see how pushing divas makes people stop watching. If the divas are doing good then more people are going to want to watch them.
   

   [*]Male wrestlrs feeling undervalued and possibly leaving due to having less air time because of giving Diva’s gimmicks.

Well it’s not the WWE’s fault if male wrestlers are undervalued. If a wrestler is undervalued it’s because they aren’t doing enough to be considered valuable. Also, I don’t think pushing a diva is going to force a popular wrestler to leave. It’s more possible that someone who didn’t help the company would leave and the WWE probably would just replace them. No big deal if one of the less valuable wrestlers leave as they can be easily replaced by someone better.

Diva’s don’t need characters. Women are used in wrestling as eye candy and to break up the show for a toilet/snack break, giving them gimmicks would take time away from the more popular male wrestlers, displease fans, whilst we would still be stuck with the sloppy Diva wrestling which we’ve always had.

Divas can be used as eye candy still while they can also have gimmicks. Also, how would it take time away from the popular male wrestlers? Do you actually think Vince is going to take time away from the bigger draws just to push a diva? No he wouldn’t. If he’s going to take time off of a wrestler then it would be someone who wasn’t good or cared about to begin with.

 

[SK]

I disagree with women not drawing. They might never be draws like Hulk Hogan but they’re still draws nonetheless. You said it yourself; right now they are used as eye candy. Men like seeing them at the arenas and so do men on TV. It would probably be the same way if they had a gimmick, as long as they have the sex appeal.

Eye candy is all they will ever really be, if Vince were to build the WWE around women’s wrestling, it would fail. People don’t want to see the Diva’s that much because the fact of the matter is, they are nowhere near as good at wrestling as the men. The saying goes if it aint broke, don’t fix it, this is exactly what needs to be applied. WWE is not broke, and trying to give Diva’s gimmicks whilst sacrificing other things would not improve anything, WWE is popular and gets good ratings, why would they change anything?

I don’t want to get too much into the knockouts because this is supposed to be about the divas, however I feel the need to say something regard them. The TNA knockouts are draws and there have been many times already in the past year or two were they have drawn higher numbers than their male counterparts, therefore proving that people do care about women’s wrestling. Notice the biggest difference between the knockouts and the divas is that that most knockouts have gimmicks. If they have gimmicks and draw high numbers for TNA why wouldn’t the divas be able to succeed with gimmicks? I’m not trying to say that a diva would be able to draw higher than John Cena like the knockouts have been able to draw higher than Kurt Angle, arguably their top star.

Knockouts’ have gimmicks? I disagree, I just think that TNA have higher quality female wrestlers, who are given more time on the mic. This is why the Knockouts’ are successful, not because of gimmicks but because of good quality matches that are actually physical and competitive. The Knockout’s do not need to have gimmicks to get over, fans just want to see a good quality wrestling match.

But it is and the TNA knockouts have proven that. If the knockouts could do it then so could the divas.

No, that’s just horrible logic, just because one set of women can do something that means that completely different women can do exactly the same? I strongly disagree and think your just generalising far too much. The Knockout’s are of so much more quality, both in the ring and on the mic, this is why the TNA fans enjoy the Diva’s more than the WWE fans. But TNA has had to sacrifice beauty for strength and where’s it got them? Nowhere, they still get lower ratings than ECW, the WWE’s C show. If TNA want to compete they should scrap the idea of women wrestling and concentrate more on men, no gimmicks for women, just make them look attractive and have small matches & segments to keep male fans happy.

So you admit they are draws because people do want to see them? And yes it does give them something different to watch so that they don’t get burnt out of males wrestling for 2+ hours. But with characters, the divas could make the fans want to watch them even more and they can attract people who don’t usually watch them.

They are a very very low draw, a few people want to see them wrestle, the majority just want to see them in skimpy clothes, this is why they don’t need gimmicks, they just need to be attractive to keep the casual, typical fan happy.

How so? When Vince gave Hulk Hogan his character people cared. When Undertaker was given his character people cared. When Ultimate Warrior was given his character people cared. Why would people not care if the divas were given good characters?

Because, once again, people don’t care for women’s wrestling, you could have the best two Diva’s in the world wrestling, but in the end people prefer to watch male wrestling, and that’s not just a random statement, the high majority of fans vastly prefer male wrestling. Wrestling started with males, became popular with males and continues to this day to be popular because of male wrestling, is it sexist? Maybe a little, but you can’t help what you want to see and nobody care for the divas, no matter if they have a gimmick or not.

But it would. Finally, fans would be given a reason to care about the divas and it would attract people who normally flip the channels when the divas are on. If given good characters then it would make fans want to see them and what they do.

As I’ve said before, just giving Diva’s gimmicks would not make people care, fans would still be getting the same poor quality matches. I fail to see how just gimmicks make fans care. Look at Kizarny, here’s a guy with a gimmick, a weird one at that, lots of vignettes, but was horrible in the ring. The fans gave no reaction to Kizarny and he was swiftly fired. Now this proves that no matter how weird a gimmick is, a gimmick by itself does not make up for poor in ring work.

Doesn’t this apply for the divas too? There are male wrestlers who don’t even get reactions yet are featured on TV weekly over divas who do get reactions. There are male wrestlers who take up TV time that could be used for the divas who people actually care about.

Who cares about the Diva’s? Not the majority that’s for sure. So let me see, you are saying someone like Mark Henry, who most weeks doesn’t get much of a reaction. Your saying he should be taken off TV and his time given to building Diva’s. Well I know I’d rather see Henry getting built up like he is, he’s even been getting decent pops, which shows if you persist with male wrestlers, it can be turned around.

How do you know this? Unless you’ve actually seen them try to pull off a decent gimmick then it’s not fair to judge whether they can or they cannot pull it off. At least by giving them a gimmick they are giving them a chance, if they fail then they stop the gimmick and no harm is done.

I don’t, but why would they waste time giving them gimmicks? There’s no need, Diva’s currently serve their purpose just fine, giving them gimmicks would just take time, money and effort, whilst still giving us the same result of boring ‘toilet break’ matches.

Since when do you need to be a quality wrestler to pull off a gimmick? Anyways, you don’t need to be a quality wrestler to have matches that fans would enjoy. The Ultimate Warrior wasn’t a quality wrestler yet fans enjoyed his matches. With it a gimmick it allows divas to hide their negatives and let the positives that they have shine.

I didn’t say you needed to be a quality wrestler, but you do need to be at least competent in the ring, plus The Ultimate Warrior had unbelievable charisma! None of the Diva’s have enough charisma to be able to pull off weaker in ring work, and just giving them a gimmick would not solve anything.

Have you seen all of the divas try to pull off a gimmick and fail at it? You can’t say that one diva one diva would only have one or two divas to compete with unless you have seen what every diva can do. There are still a few divas who we haven’t seen much of what they can do.

Maybe I’ve not seen every Diva try a gimmick, but I have heard all of them on the mic or in segments and in the ring, and from what I’ve seen, none of them are good enough in the ring to warrant getting a gimmick. Getting a gimmick would not improve their mic work or their in ring work, which the fans would ultimately see.

Yes they do. They draw when they are wrestlers with gimmicks evident by the TNA knockouts and they draw when they are simply eye candy evident by the WWE’s divas.

But which show draws greater overall, the WWE. This shows that the WWE’s way of using Diva’s is far more popular than TNA and it’s not like TNA even have an excuse, every wrestling fan has heard of them, they just don’t want to watch women’s wrestling.

Well, they aren’t in that position because their male counterparts draw higher ratings. If women were the bigger rating draws then they’d probably be main eventing since it would get the highest ratings for a show.

But women will never draw well enough to warrant gimmicks and main event matches. The overall quality is so obviously worse, hence why they get no crowd reaction. And the thing is CM Punk got huge pops on ECW without speaking on the mic (bar a few words about being straight edge), so why can’t the Diva’s? Because their wrestling is poor, you don’t always need gimmicks or mic time to get over.

That’s because there’s no reason for people care about them. With a gimmick added to them then there is a possibility people would care about them and their matches would get promoted. I think this is mostly done to get more people on the show. The more eye candy the better.

And the ‘possibility’ is very low. The majority of fans do not want to see women’s matches taking up places on the card, not because they don’t have gimmicks, but because they are nowhere near as exciting or as good in the ring as the men, this is where the problem lies.

This untrue, there have been times that those divas with gimmicks had people cared about them a lot about.

Who exactly is this referring to?

Well with a gimmick, the wrestling could be more interesting. By having gimmicks it allows divas to hide their negatives and let the positives shine, it’s all depending on what type of gimmick they play. So the matches would not be the same because they would have to change what they are doing in order to get their gimmick over. Also, there are fans who don’t watch just because of the wrestling but also because they want to be entertained. The divas could deliver entertainment if given a chance with a gimmick.

How does a gimmick affect wrestling ability, it’s not the moves I’m concerned about it’s the general consistency, selling and delivery that the Diva’s have problems with, I don’t see how giving them a gimmick would improve this.

Poor wrestling does not equal having gimmicks dragged down. If this were the case then The Ultimate Warrior wouldn’t have been as big as he was during his time.

But The Ultimate Warrior was a huge powerhouse with bags of charisma, none of the Diva’s show any charisma. And I never said poor gimmicks drag down wrestling, all I said was that the Diva’s wrestling is so poor no-one would care what their gimmick was.

That gimmick did not fail. Its point was to annoy fans and get them to boo her because of her horrendous singing. I’d say that it worked and it still works when she comes out singing.

Yes it did fail, massively. Jillian was a comedy act who was below average in the ring, if the gimmick worked, she’d have been champion, and we’d still be seeing that gimmick right now, but were not.

I don’t think this gimmick failed either. The Glamazon’s point was to show she was beautiful but still could wrestle as good as or better than anyone else on the roster of divas. I’d say that it succeeded.

Succeeded how? Did the fans care more about women’s wrestling? No. Was Beth Pheonix taken off TV because she didn’t have a swimsuit look? Yes. The fans don’t want Diva’s with gimmicks, they want swimsuit contests, bra & panties matches, attractive looking women rolling around on top of each other.

Like I said, with two of the gimmicks I think they were able to make audience hate or love them, they were good on the mic because they were able to accomplish what they were supposed to, and because their in-ring work wasn’t sloppy. With the other 2 gimmicks you listed I have to agree with one only and the other we didn’t get to see enough of to judge properly.

Good mic work and gimmicks mean absolutely nothing if you can’t cut it in the ring.

It might have been possible that Beth was kept off because of the reason you mentioned but there might always be other reasons they are kept off of TV.

Well it was reported on Wrestlezone, PWInsider, Rajah and all other major wrestling sites, so I’m going to take it that it was most likely the reason she was kept off TV.

Yes, Vince does know a lot about wrestling but it doesn’t necessarily mean everything he does is right. Now I’m not going to sit here and say I’m right and he’s wrong because he hasn’t exactly tested out the idea of having women with gimmicks to see if it works.

Vince does know, that’s how his company is still successful, and why TNA are still no competition, they can have all the good women’s wrestling they want with gimmicks, but it’s not helping them. Without it, the WWE remains the only Major wrestling promotion worldwide.

What does gender have to do with what interests someone the most? There are lots of males who like who like to see the divas, so I don’t think we should bring in genders into this. Also, not all males are interested in seeing males wrestle.

Gender has a huge deal to do with why people watch wrestling and if you can’t accept this your being naïve. Wrestling began with men wrestling, it grew with male wrestling and has remained popular with male wrestling. The audience want to see high impact fights between men and this is shown throughout history via crowd reactions, ratings, ppv buys, merchandise sale etc.

So like I said we shouldn’t bring genders into this because it would be unfair since the majority of fans are males. If the majority were females then the divas would probably be the most popular ones.

So just because something proves my point you want to ignore it? The fact is most wrestling fans are male, you can’t simply say it’s not fair to mention it, because the majority has to be pleased and it seems as though men are more pleased when men are wrestling rather than women. Yes, maybe if the majority were women Diva’s would be more popular, but that’s not the case and seems as though it never will be.

If they are given gimmicks then that could maybe change everything or at least change it drastically. You’re right they should appeal to the majority of fans but they shouldn’t just appeal to them. If they have time after making sure they’ve appealed to the majority then they should also appeal to the others. Remember, promoters want as many fans as they possibly can get, whether they are in a majority or minority they want them.

Gimmicks have to have more promo time, which takes time away from what the masses want, male wrestling. Wrestling shows are only so long and WWE does try to please Diva fans by having Diva matches, if he took time away from male wrestling then the majority would not be happy would they?

Well that’s because they don’t have a reason to care about them at all. With a gimmick it could possibly make people care about them and not moan and call their matches “toilet breaks”.

But like I’ve said, gimmicks do not improve match quality, gimmicks get you nowhere if your bad in the ring, look at Giant Gonzales, Glacier, Kizarny etc. All had gimmicks but couldn’t wrestle, matches would still be horrible and would still be toilet breaks, the problem is not Diva’s not having characters, it’s the fact that the Diva’s can’t deliver good matches.

Typical wrestling fans do not care about the divas because they have no gimmicks for fans to possibly care about them. Also, most fans would prefer a divas match over one of the boring male wrestling matches we get. Just because a wrestler is male it does not mean fans want to see them.

Who? Who would rather see that? I know I would rather watch Triple H vs. Randy Orton (always referred to as boring) than Mickie James vs. Maryse, and you know why? Because the men can wrestle, Neither man really has huge gimmick, more just deep characters, so I don’t think gimmicks are as important as ring work.

Well not really. If fans are giving lackluster shows then does that mean that none of the male wrestlers are popular because no one is reacting to them? It would be a complete different story if a diva had a gimmick, the fans were given a good show, and no one reacted to the divas.

They way to get fans to react is to have good in ring charisma and ability, this is what pops the crowd the most, not a gimmick. If the Diva’s were better wrestlers or got the crowd involved at all they would find that the crowd would react a lot more.

Also, are you going to deny that Trish Stratus or Lita aren’t popular? The “Divas aren’t popular, no matter who they are” argument is very flawed. There are plenty of divas who were and still are popular, please tell me you aren’t denying that?

No I would never deny that Trish and Lita weren’t popular, but I do know why they were, they were exciting in the ring. Neither Diva had a gimmick, fans just loved to see a good quality Diva match for once, Lita broke boundaries by becoming hardcore and using aerial moves, this is why they were popular.

Not always do the pops go to males. There have been times were some males don’t even get reactions and divas do. Divas are also what fans want to see. Males aren’t the only ones who deliver you know.

The majority of pops go to males, a good gimmick would be unlikely to pop a crowd if the wrestler can’t wrestle or isn’t as exciting. Diva’s are not what the majority want to see though, you even admitted that yourself, you also agreed that the majority need to be pleased, so by giving more depth/ time to divas, you are not pleasing the majority.

Never say Never. I’m sure there are plenty of gimmicks in the past that one would have thought wouldn’t work but they did. You can’t say they wouldn’t work until you see them happen. In pro-wrestling you really cannot say never.

Exactly, just like The Undertaker’s gimmick, here we have a horrible horrible gimmick of a man that is the living dead, and can shoot lightening bolts, it’s really bad, but he made it work, through great wrestling ability and charisma. Now we take Se7en (Dustin Rhodes) in WCW with very similar gimmick and this did not go down well, was clearly unsuccessful, all because Rhodes is not in Takers league wrestling wise.

This is not always the case. Just because a wrestler is male it does not mean that fans will obviously care more about them. There have been times that divas were cared more about than the male wrestlers. Don’t assume that just because a wrestler is male it instantly means they are cared more about. It all depends if they can deliver, which there are some that can’t.

I will assume this, because male wrestling has always been far more popular than women’s there’s no disputing that. Fans would rather see males wrestle, proven by crowd reactions, and placement on cards. If women ever main evented a PPV there would be a huge ratings loss, people complain when the Diva matches are later in the card, could you imagine if they main evented?

Most divas aren’t sloppy. Plus just because they get a gimmick it doesn’t mean that they are going to become sloppy workers. This goes back to the hiding the negatives and letting the positives shine. If there are moves that they do that are sloppy then a gimmick allows them to not have to use it and instead they can only use the moves that aren’t sloppy when they perform them. It all just depends on the gimmick they would get if given one.

Have you watched the Diva’s recently? Their in ring work is of a very poor quality, I would consider it very sloppy. You can’t just hide things, wrestlers need to sell well and hit moves consistently well, the Diva’s do not.

I don’t know where you got the idea of fans wanting to stop watching because divas are pushed. If they stop watching then they probably weren’t true and real fans to begin with to be honest. I still don’t see how pushing divas makes people stop watching. If the divas are doing good then more people are going to want to watch them.

I got the idea because if you give Diva’s gimmicks, that take vignettes, promos and segents, all taking time away from male wrestling, the reason why most fans watch wrestling. And nowadays, fans aren’t real or true fans, they are casual fans or kids, mainly male, they want to see hard hitting high impact wrestling or women in skimpy clothes.

Well it’s not the WWE’s fault if male wrestlers are undervalued. If a wrestler is undervalued it’s because they aren’t doing enough to be considered valuable. Also, I don’t think pushing a diva is going to force a popular wrestler to leave. It’s more possible that someone who didn’t help the company would leave and the WWE probably would just replace them. No big deal if one of the less valuable wrestlers leave as they can be easily replaced by someone better.

Pushing a Diva over another wrestler could easily make someone leave. If the WWE pushes Diva’s over some of their midcarders, of course there would be the possibility of them leaving, they’d be annoyed and with good reason, the Diva’s are a small part of WWE and do not need pushing. Midcarders have to move up to main event level and therefore need the push much more.

Divas can be used as eye candy still while they can also have gimmicks. Also, how would it take time away from the popular male wrestlers? Do you actually think Vince is going to take time away from the bigger draws just to push a diva? No he wouldn’t. If he’s going to take time off of a wrestler then it would be someone who wasn’t good or cared about to begin with.

Why bother wasting time, effort and money though if he isn’t going to push them? No of course Vince wouldn’t push Diva’s over top draws, as he doesn’t want to lose money, so this explains why Diva’s aren’t given gimmicks - they aren’t worth it.

 

[SavageTaker]

Eye candy is all they will ever really be, if Vince were to build the WWE around women’s wrestling, it would fail.

How do you know this? Have you actually seen him try and it not being successful? I’m not saying having gimmicks would succeed for the divas, but I’m also not saying it will fail. At least there is a chance people will care about them with gimmicks and it could succeed.

People don’t want to see the Diva’s that much because the fact of the matter is, they are nowhere near as good at wrestling as the men.

I hope you’re not being sexist. So because a wrestler is a man it automatically means they are better wrestlers than the divas? That statement reeks with ridiculousness. Divas can be better wrestlers than men. It all depends on how well they were trained. I also seem to remember that divas and male wrestlers are both trained in the same place. They both get trained by the same people and at the same place. They both get trained in FCW.

The saying goes if it aint broke, don’t fix it, this is exactly what needs to be applied.

There is also a saying that goes it it’s broken, fix it. That’s exactly what needs to be applied here. The people don’t care about the divas and don’t think they are important, that needs to be fixed. Adding gimmicks to them could possibly be the solution. Some of the most popular wrestlers ever have had gimmicks. If The Undertaker didn’t have his gimmick, then people wouldn’t have cared for him because he would just have been some other guy on the roster. That’s the reason people don’t care about the divas, they are just some other women on the roster. With gimmicks, they can be told apart from the other divas because people will care for them.

WWE is not broke,

Who said they were? The divas division is broke not the WWE as a whole.

and trying to give Diva’s gimmicks whilst sacrificing other things would not improve anything,

Vince will still keep the important things. Not everything on Vince’s shows is important. The only thing he would be sacrificing is matches and segments that people are bored of and want them to stop (i.e Hornswaggle vs. Chavo). It really doesn’t look like he would be sacrificing much.

WWE is popular and gets good ratings, why would they change anything?

They are only changing the divas division and it’s not like they are changing much of it. All they would be doing is giving them gimmicks, and with gimmicks they could still have the sex appeal that fans want. They won’t be losing fans; as a matter of fact they would gain fans. More females would watch because there would be a reason to watch.

Knockouts’ have gimmicks? I disagree,

Yes, they have gimmicks. I’m not going to get into all of them because we are supposed to be debating divas, not knockouts.
The Beautiful People: They think they are better than everyone else and play the “bitch” roles. That’s their gimmick: being “bitches” who think they are better than every other knockout.

Awesome Kong: Dominant Monster in the knockouts division.

ODB: …I don’t think I need to explain it if you’ve ever seen her. But if you haven’t, it’s basically what her name stands for: One Dirty Bitch.

So do you still think that the knockouts don’t have gimmicks?

I just think that TNA have higher quality female wrestlers, who are given more time on the mic.

It’s not all about quality female wrestler and having mic time. They also have gimmicks that enable people to either hate or love them as wrestlers. For example, Awesome Kong doesn’t need to talk, people will just hate her because she can dominate every other female including the babyfaces.

This is why the Knockouts’ are successful, not because of gimmicks but because of good quality matches that are actually physical and competitive.

The Beautiful People aren’t the best knockouts when it comes to wrestling ability, but they have been able to get over and be successful because of their gimmicks.

The Knockout’s do not need to have gimmicks to get over, fans just want to see a good quality wrestling match.

I disagree completely. More people would prefer seeing good characters that are entertaining over people who can have good quality wrestling matches. Case in point, The Ultimate Warrior, he didn’t put on quality wrestling matches yet he was over because of his gimmick. If people really wanted to see good quality wrestling matches then ROH would be the number one company and they would be filling arenas that sit 10,000+ fans. That’s not the case though, they can barely fill up a bingo hall.

No, that’s just horrible logic, just because one set of women can do something that means that completely different women can do exactly the same? I strongly disagree and think your just generalising far too much. The Knockout’s are of so much more quality, both in the ring and on the mic, this is why the TNA fans enjoy the Diva’s more than the WWE fans.

You do realize that a lot of the WWE Divas trained WITH the knockouts? They were trained by the same people, at the same place, and they were taught the same things. If the Knockouts could do it why couldn’t the Divas? If the knockouts were successful then so can the divas because they were trained exactly the same way.

But TNA has had to sacrifice beauty for strength and where’s it got them? Nowhere, they still get lower ratings than ECW, the WWE’s C show.

So we’re going to blame the knockouts for the ratings being lower than the WWE’s ratings? I guess that means we can also blame the divas for when Raw’s ratings fall below the 3.0 mark? TNA’s ratings are lower than the WWE’s because they have a horrible marketing team or because people don’t like what they see from everyone else. If you look at the ratings for each quarter hour then you will see that the TNA knockouts have been constantly some of the top draws. Even the ones that have gimmicks have been top draws. There have actually been times were the knockouts have outdrawn guys like Kurt Angle and Sting, who are suppose to be the top rating draws in the company.

If TNA want to compete they should scrap the idea of women wrestling and concentrate more on men, no gimmicks for women, just make them look attractive and have small matches & segments to keep male fans happy.

You said it yourself. I believe the saying goes something like if it aint broke, don’t fix it. Women draw as eye candy but they don’t draw as much as women wrestling. Also, male fans can still be happy with divas that have gimmicks. Divas having gimmicks does not mean the sex appeal is going to be remove. Divas can still be used as eye candy and have gimmicks, at the same time.

They are a very very low draw, a few people want to see them wrestle, the majority just want to see them in skimpy clothes, this is why they don’t need gimmicks, they just need to be attractive to keep the casual, typical fan happy.

Yes, women that are used for eye candy are very low draws, but they are still draws nonetheless. But the majority of people want to see women wrestlers that have good gimmicks and can entertain people. There are some males who do like them only when they are wearing skimpy clothes and those males can still be pleased. Like I said, Divas having gimmicks does not mean the sex appeal will be removed. It will still be there so that the males who like it will be pleased. If they are given gimmicks and they still have the sex appeal, then the males who only like them for that will be pleased and the ones who watch wrestling to be entertained and for the gimmicks will be pleased to. Everyone wins; it’s basically a win-win situation.

Because, once again, people don’t care for women’s wrestling,

Tell that to the near 1.5+ million people who watch the TNA knockouts.

you could have the best two Diva’s in the world wrestling, but in the end people prefer to watch male wrestling,

Tell that to Trish Stratus and Lita. When they were feuding people cared more about them than they did for the majority of males on the show. Why was that the case? Because people were entertained by them. I assure you that if the divas were to be given good gimmicks then people would be entertained by them.

and that’s not just a random statement, the high majority of fans vastly prefer male wrestling.

The vast majority of wrestling fans prefer whatever it is entertaining, whether it be males or females. Gender doesn’t matter. As long as a wrestling fan is entertained then they will watch.

Wrestling started with males, became popular with males and continues to this day to be popular because of male wrestling, is it sexist? Maybe a little, but you can’t help what you want to see and nobody care for the divas, no matter if they have a gimmick or not.

There’s a big problem and the logic of wrestling starting with males and becoming popular because of males is flawed. You have to look at the time that wrestling started and realize that it wasn’t acceptable for women to wrestle. Many years after wrestling started women were allowed to wrestle but women’s wrestling was banned in several states. Don’t ask me why (because I don’t know) but it just wasn’t acceptable for women to be wrestling in some states. I’m sure they could have contributed a lot more if women’s wrestling wasn’t banned during the time wrestling was flourishing in popularity. It took many years for male wrestling to become popular and because there was a ban in women’s wrestling it took longer than it should have for it to become popular.

As I’ve said before, just giving Diva’s gimmicks would not make people care,

If it’s a good gimmick then it would. Like I’ve already said, fans want to be entertained and if a diva can entertain them because of their gimmick then it will make people care.

fans would still be getting the same poor quality matches.

Fans don’t care if they get poor quality matches. The majority of fans just want to be entertained. If fans wanted good quality matches then ROH would be filling up arenas that sit 15,000+ fans and they would be the number one company in the world. But since it isn’t the case, they aren’t filling up arenas that sit 15,000+ fans and they are the number three company in America. Not even the world, but in America. If fans wanted good quality matches then people wouldn’t have cared about The Ultimate Warrior and he wouldn’t have been so popular.

I fail to see how just gimmicks make fans care.

Because good gimmicks entertain fans and make them want to watch a wrestler. If The Undertaker didn’t have his gimmick then no one would have cared about him because there wouldn’t be a reason to watch him.

Look at Kizarny, here’s a guy with a gimmick, a weird one at that, lots of vignettes, but was horrible in the ring.

You said it yourself: it was a weird gimmick. It was a gimmick that was bad therefore fans weren’t going to care about him. As far as his in-ring skills, I won’t comment on them because I didn’t see enough to properly judge them.

The fans gave no reaction to Kizarny and he was swiftly fired.

Because it was a bad gimmick. If the gimmick has been good then he might not have been fired and would have had a chance at success.

Now this proves that no matter how weird a gimmick is, a gimmick by itself does not make up for poor in ring work.

Tell that to Warrior. He had poor in-ring work and his gimmick by itself made up for the in-ring work.

Who cares about the Diva’s? Not the majority that’s for sure.

Because they haven’t been given a reason to care. Having a gimmick could be the solution to the problem.

So let me see, you are saying someone like Mark Henry, who most weeks doesn’t get much of a reaction. Your saying he should be taken off TV and his time given to building Diva’s. Well I know I’d rather see Henry getting built up like he is, he’s even been getting decent pops, which shows if you persist with male wrestlers, it can be turned around.

I didn’t suggest that Mark Henry get removed from television. He’s actually getting a reaction from the fans so he should stay. There are however wrestlers who don’t get reactions at all or get them every once in a long while, case in point: Shelton Benjamin. In ECW they persisted to get Henry a reaction and it worked. The same thing in Raw, they persisted and it worked. There hadn’t been attempt to get Henry a reaction for many years and when they finally attempted it worked. Then you have Shelton Benjamin, who they’ve attempted to get over as a heel for ¾ years not and it still isn’t working. They’ve persisted and persisted yet it hasn’t worked for him. Shelton Benjamin is the perfect example that just because you persist with a male wrestler, it doesn’t mean there reactions are going to turn around.

I don’t, but why would they waste time giving them gimmicks? There’s no need, Diva’s currently serve their purpose just fine, giving them gimmicks would just take time, money and effort, whilst still giving us the same result of boring ‘toilet break’ matches.

How would it take time? They can still have gimmicks and use them in the time they are allotted every week on their respective shows. More time wouldn’t hurt but it’s not necessary.
How would it take money? Care to explain because I really don’t get how giving a diva a gimmick would waste money.
They could still give the same effort they do now.
We get “toilet-break” matches because people don’t care about the divas. Giving the divas gimmicks could get people to care about them and get them to watch them.

I didn’t say you needed to be a quality wrestler,

Wait! You have completely contradicted yourself then.

As I’ve said before, just giving Diva’s gimmicks would not make people care, fans would still be getting the same poor quality matches.

You said the divas give poor quality matches yet you’re implying now that they don’t need to be quality wrestlers. So…why does it matter if they can give poor or good quality matches because according to you they don’t need to be quality wrestlers.

but you do need to be at least competent in the ring,

No you don’t. Warrior wasn’t very competent in the ring and look at how over he was during his time.

plus The Ultimate Warrior had unbelievable charisma!

His gimmick was the thing that gave him charisma. The fact that he wore face paint, had colorful attire, and was full of energy when he ran towards the ring shows that he got over because of all of those things. If you take all of that away then you have a guy who has no charisma.

None of the Diva’s have enough charisma to be able to pull off weaker in ring work, and just giving them a gimmick would not solve anything.

You don’t need charisma to pull off in-ring work. Like I said about Warrior, his gimmick allowed him to not have to use many moves. He was a poor in-ring worker but he let what he knew shine and hid anything else he might not have been good. Without a gimmick more would have been demanded from him in his in-ring work. They same applies for the divas. I have already explained why I think that giving a gimmick to a diva would solve things.

Maybe I’ve not seen every Diva try a gimmick, but I have heard all of them on the mic or in segments and in the ring, and from what I’ve seen, none of them are good enough in the ring to warrant getting a gimmick. Getting a gimmick would not improve their mic work or their in ring work, which the fans would ultimately see.

But you’ve implied that you don’t need to be a quality wrestler. So the divas’ not being good in the ring is completely irrelevant now. As far as mic skills go, some of the divas can hold their own on the mic. Having good mic skills is something that isn’t needed, it all depends what the gimmick is. Mic skills will just help them but there are gimmicks were they don’t need to have good mic skills to be successful. When it comes to mic skills, it all basically depends on what the gimmick is.

But which show draws greater overall, the WWE. This shows that the WWE’s way of using Diva’s is far more popular than TNA and it’s not like TNA even have an excuse, every wrestling fan has heard of them, they just don’t want to watch women’s wrestling.

Umm...Divas draw more than knockouts for one reason. They get a less than 5 minute match or segment and the rest of the quarter hour is usually something that the majority of fans actually want to see. If you have both the divas and the knockouts fill out one quarter hour, then the knockouts would probably draw more.

But women will never draw well enough to warrant gimmicks and main event matches.

Why do we need to bring in having main event matches into this? It’s quite clear that we aren’t going to see the divas in the main event in a very long time. It has only happened once and it will be a cold day in hell when it happens again. They won’t be in the main event not because they aren’t good but because Vince doesn’t want them in there. He knows it would be better to have John Cena in the main over a diva.

The overall quality is so obviously worse, hence why they get no crowd reaction. And the thing is CM Punk got huge pops on ECW without speaking on the mic (bar a few words about being straight edge), so why can’t the Diva’s? Because their wrestling is poor, you don’t always need gimmicks or mic time to get over.

Well CM Punk does have a gimmick. He is straight-edge. That’s his gimmick but unlike many others, it’s one that is a reality for him. And you’ve already implied that they don’t need to be quality wrestlers so the wrestling being poor is irrelevant. And I’ve already said what I needed to say about mic skills.

And the ‘possibility’ is very low. The majority of fans do not want to see women’s matches taking up places on the card, not because they don’t have gimmicks, but because they are nowhere near as exciting or as good in the ring as the men, this is where the problem lies.

How does a gimmick affect wrestling ability, it’s not the moves I’m concerned about it’s the general consistency, selling and delivery that the Diva’s have problems with, I don’t see how giving them a gimmick would improve this.

Because with a gimmick they can let what they are bad at hide and let what they are good or moderately good at shine. If a diva has a gimmick like the Ultimate Warrior then she doesn’t need to be good at selling a move. It all depends on the gimmick. There are some that enable them to not have to do some things.

Yes it did fail, massively. Jillian was a comedy act who was below average in the ring, if the gimmick worked, she’d have been champion, and we’d still be seeing that gimmick right now, but were not.

The point of the gimmick was to annoy fans and get them to boo her, it got her over. The fans hated her because of her singing, so I don’t think it failed massively because it achieved its goal. Also, the gimmick wasn’t meant as a way to build her up to be a champion, it was a way to build her up so that face divas could defeat her and the fans would be happy that they shut her up. Also, we aren’t seeing the gimmick right now because Jillian’s grandfather died and she had to take a leave of absence. I’m sure that once she returns she’ll probably have the same gimmick.

Succeeded how? Did the fans care more about women’s wrestling? No. Was Beth Pheonix taken off TV because she didn’t have a swimsuit look? Yes. The fans don’t want Diva’s with gimmicks, they want swimsuit contests, bra & panties matches, attractive looking women rolling around on top of each other.

Who said Beth’s gimmick was supposed to make fans care about women’s wrestling? It wasn’t me. I said that it was suppose to show that she was beautiful but still could wrestle well.

Good mic work and gimmicks mean absolutely nothing if you can’t cut it in the ring.

You implied that they don’t need to be quality wrestlers. It’s completely irrelevant if they can cut it in the ring. Warrior couldn’t cut it in the ring yet he got over. Warrior’s promos made absolutely no sense yet he go over. He had crazy promos and he couldn’t cut it in the ring, yet he got over.

Well it was reported on Wrestlezone, PWInsider, Rajah and all other major wrestling sites, so I’m going to take it that it was most likely the reason she was kept off TV.

What you read from those websites you have to take with a grain of salt. I’m not saying it is a lie but it could very well be.

Vince does know, that’s how his company is still successful, and why TNA are still no competition, they can have all the good women’s wrestling they want with gimmicks, but it’s not helping them. Without it, the WWE remains the only Major wrestling promotion worldwide.

Vince doesn’t know because he has never actually made a good attempt. It would be completely different if he tried and it failed. He won’t know until he tries it. I’m not saying I am correct but it also doesn’t mean Vince is correct. And I’m not denying that WWE remains the number one promotion in the world. Having gimmicks on divas can only help, but I am by no means saying that they aren’t going to be number one without gimmicks on divas.

Gender has a huge deal to do with why people watch wrestling and if you can’t accept this your being naïve.

I know gender has a lot to do it because there are a lot of sexist fans and I’ll accept that so I’m not being naïve. However, there are also a lot of fans who don’t care about genders, they just care if they are entertained or not. You can’t deny that either.

Wrestling began with men wrestling, it grew with male wrestling and has remained popular with male wrestling. The audience want to see high impact fights between men and this is shown throughout history via crowd reactions, ratings, ppv buys, merchandise sale etc.

So just because something proves my point you want to ignore it?

Trust me I’m not ignoring it. If I was then I wouldn’t bother responding at all.

The fact is most wrestling fans are male, you can’t simply say it’s not fair to mention it, because the majority has to be pleased and it seems as though men are more pleased when men are wrestling rather than women. Yes, maybe if the majority were women Diva’s would be more popular, but that’s not the case and seems as though it never will be.

And…I never denied any of that. However, the male fans that are pleased right now can still be pleased if divas have gimmicks. It depends on the gimmick, if it’s one were the sex appeal is still there then those fans will still be pleased because they are still getting what they want.

Gimmicks have to have more promo time, which takes time away from what the masses want, male wrestling.

About the promo time tell that to ‘Taker. I don’t remember him talking all that much yet he was still over. Also, no one is asking for male wrestling to be removed. I’m just asking for meaningless male wrestling to be removed. By meaningless I mean the male wrestling no one cares about, like Chavo vs. Hornswaggle. Also, you don’t need to have 10 minutes of promo time to get a gimmick over. A gimmick can get over in a 2 minute promo. For Example when Jericho turned heel and changed his gimmick he was all about calling fans parasites and hypocrites. He could have done that in 2 minutes. He didn’t need 10 minutes of promo times in order for his gimmick to get over. What he could have done in 10 minutes he could have done in 2 minutes.

Wrestling shows are only so long and WWE does try to please Diva fans by having Diva matches, if he took time away from male wrestling then the majority would not be happy would they?

Well it depends. If the match is entertaining then fans might be upset if it only lasted a minute. If they have another match that was horrible and not entertaining at all then fans would be upset that the good match didn’t go on a little longer.

But like I’ve said, gimmicks do not improve match quality, gimmicks get you nowhere if your bad in the ring, look at Giant Gonzales, Glacier, Kizarny etc. All had gimmicks but couldn’t wrestle, matches would still be horrible and would still be toilet breaks, the problem is not Diva’s not having characters, it’s the fact that the Diva’s can’t deliver good matches.

Two of those wrestlers were horrible wrestlers and had terrible gimmicks. Kizarny had a bad gimmick but I won’t comment on his wrestling because I didn’t see enough of it. As far as divas not delivering in matches, well some can they just aren’t booked to do so.

Who? Who would rather see that? I know I would rather watch Triple H vs. Randy Orton (always referred to as boring) than Mickie James vs. Maryse, and you know why? Because the men can wrestle, Neither man really has huge gimmick, more just deep characters, so I don’t think gimmicks are as important as ring work.

I meant that they would rather see a divas match then Chavo vs. Hornswaggle. Chavo vs. Hornswaggle would be classified as one of the boring male matches. Also, to be honest I’d rather see Maryse vs. Mickie over Triple H vs. Orton but that’s because I’ve already seen Orton vs. Triple H too many times. At least Mickie/Maryse is something that I haven’t seen too many times and it’s not boring yet. Also, Triple H and Orton do have gimmicks. A character is the same thing as a gimmick, just different words.

They way to get fans to react is to have good in ring charisma and ability, this is what pops the crowd the most, not a gimmick. If the Diva’s were better wrestlers or got the crowd involved at all they would find that the crowd would react a lot more.

I disagree. A way to get a fan to react is by making them care about you. Currently fans don’t care about divas but with a good gimmick they could. It all depends on what the gimmick is though.

No I would never deny that Trish and Lita weren’t popular, but I do know why they were, they were exciting in the ring. Neither Diva had a gimmick, fans just loved to see a good quality Diva match for once, Lita broke boundaries by becoming hardcore and using aerial moves, this is why they were popular.

Well…they didn’t need a gimmick because like you said they were good in the ring. Unfortunately none of the current divas are as good as them so they do need gimmicks.

The majority of pops go to males, a good gimmick would be unlikely to pop a crowd if the wrestler can’t wrestle or isn’t as exciting. Diva’s are not what the majority want to see though, you even admitted that yourself, you also agreed that the majority need to be pleased, so by giving more depth/ time to divas, you are not pleasing the majority.

If a diva has a good gimmick and she can make it work then they will get pops. Also by giving more depth/time to the divas, it’s not displeasing the majority. It might displease some but not the majority. If the majority of people aren’t getting displeased then there is nothing wrong with giving them a little extra time and more depth.

Exactly, just like The Undertaker’s gimmick, here we have a horrible horrible gimmick of a man that is the living dead, and can shoot lightening bolts, it’s really bad, but he made it work, through great wrestling ability and charisma. Now we take Se7en (Dustin Rhodes) in WCW with very similar gimmick and this did not go down well, was clearly unsuccessful, all because Rhodes is not in Takers league wrestling wise.

You do know the Undertaker’s gimmick was actually a great gimmick? You might not think so but if you look at the time it was created it was a great one. The gimmick worked because it scared kids not because of his wrestling ability. If you look at some of his matches from those days they were boring and slow. The gimmick worked because it was a good one at the time.

I will assume this, because male wrestling has always been far more popular than women’s there’s no disputing that. Fans would rather see males wrestle, proven by crowd reactions, and placement on cards. If women ever main evented a PPV there would be a huge ratings loss, people complain when the Diva matches are later in the card, could you imagine if they main evented?

Crowd reactions mean absolutely nothing to be honest. If Vince wants to have John Cena in the main event of a pay per view then he’s going to put him in the main-event. If he doesn’t want him then he won’t put him there. It’s what Vince’s wants not what a crowd wants. As far as a huge ratings loss, the answer would probably be yes. People pay to see guys like John Cena in the main-event not Maria.

Have you watched the Diva’s recently? Their in ring work is of a very poor quality, I would consider it very sloppy. You can’t just hide things, wrestlers need to sell well and hit moves consistently well, the Diva’s do not.

Well, I have seen the divas match and a couple of weeks ago I saw a good divas match in Michelle McCool vs. Melina at NOC. Now, I was surprised because I didn’t think I would ever see a good match that McCool was in, but they had a good match nonetheless. Also, yes you can hide things. If a diva performs a sloppy dropkick, with a gimmick (depending on it) she doesn’t need to use it all and it’s not something that would be demanded from her to use.

I got the idea because if you give Diva’s gimmicks, that take vignettes, promos and segents, all taking time away from male wrestling, the reason why most fans watch wrestling. And nowadays, fans aren’t real or true fans, they are casual fans or kids, mainly male, they want to see hard hitting high impact wrestling or women in skimpy clothes.

You don’t need vignettes, promos, and segments. Those things just help but aren’t necessary.

Pushing a Diva over another wrestler could easily make someone leave. If the WWE pushes Diva’s over some of their midcarders, of course there would be the possibility of them leaving, they’d be annoyed and with good reason, the Diva’s are a small part of WWE and do not need pushing. Midcarders have to move up to main event level and therefore need the push much more.

No one is asking for divas to be pushed over mid-carders. If they are going to be pushed then they need to be pushed over guys who people are bored by or don’t care about, like Chavo, Hornswaggle, e.t.c. Also, if a wrestler leaves it’s because they are insecure. They don’t like it at a women is a more valuable asset so they would leave.

Why bother wasting time, effort and money though if he isn’t going to push them? No of course Vince wouldn’t push Diva’s over top draws, as he doesn’t want to lose money, so this explains why Diva’s aren’t given gimmicks - they aren’t worth it.

How is it wasting time if they would probably get the same time they do now? They can still put in the same effort they do now? And I still don’t understand how it wastes money.

 

[SK]

Sorry I’ve not replied, I’ve been really busy but I’m just going to take some of the main points from your last post as I don’t have time to do it all.

I hope you’re not being sexist. So because a wrestler is a man it automatically means they are better wrestlers than the divas? That statement reeks with ridiculousness. Divas can be better wrestlers than men. It all depends on how well they were trained. I also seem to remember that divas and male wrestlers are both trained in the same place. They both get trained by the same people and at the same place. They both get trained in FCW.

Sexism is everywhere ST, it would be stupid to ignore it. I myself am not sexist, but look at all major sports, men are the forefront of all major sports. Men obviously aren’t automatically better wrestlers, but that doesn’t change the fact that people prefer to watch men in athletic competition. No matter who you train with won’t change this, male wrestling is obviously much preferred and anyone who can’t admit that is delusional.

There is also a saying that goes it it’s broken, fix it. That’s exactly what needs to be applied here. The people don’t care about the divas and don’t think they are important, that needs to be fixed. Adding gimmicks to them could possibly be the solution. Some of the most popular wrestlers ever have had gimmicks. If The Undertaker didn’t have his gimmick, then people wouldn’t have cared for him because he would just have been some other guy on the roster. That’s the reason people don’t care about the divas, they are just some other women on the roster. With gimmicks, they can be told apart from the other divas because people will care for them.

If the WWE as a whole isn’t broke then why try to fix the Diva’s at the risk of losing fans? Fans are obviously enjoying the WWE as it is, it has no competition and draws huge ratings, what do they need to fix? I don’t see why Diva’s need to be important or be cared about in the WWE if it’s currently successful. It’s not like the Diva’s aren’t getting airtime or a chance to shine, and the system works and always has.

Vince will still keep the important things. Not everything on Vince’s shows is important. The only thing he would be sacrificing is matches and segments that people are bored of and want them to stop (i.e Hornswaggle vs. Chavo). It really doesn’t look like he would be sacrificing much.

I agree it wouldn’t be bad sacrificing those two, however, they are just for comedic relief, Vince thinks it’s funny and he’s not going to sacrifice them for something that he doesn’t feel worth it, as he has shown by never pushing the Diva’s division.

They are only changing the divas division and it’s not like they are changing much of it. All they would be doing is giving them gimmicks, and with gimmicks they could still have the sex appeal that fans want. They won’t be losing fans; as a matter of fact they would gain fans. More females would watch because there would be a reason to watch.

Why would Diva’s having gimmicks give females a reason to watch? That’s an odd claim to make, just because a Diva is given a gimmick, random women will start tuning in because of it?

The Beautiful People aren’t the best knockouts when it comes to wrestling ability, but they have been able to get over and be successful because of their gimmicks.

What gimmicks? Being beautiful? I guess you could say all the Diva’s have gimmicks then and haven’t got over. I find that The Beautiful People are exciting in the ring, they sell their moves well and look like they are hurting their opponents. They haven’t got over because of their ‘gimmick’, they got over by being good heels and being good in the ring.

I disagree completely. More people would prefer seeing good characters that are entertaining over people who can have good quality wrestling matches. Case in point, The Ultimate Warrior, he didn’t put on quality wrestling matches yet he was over because of his gimmick. If people really wanted to see good quality wrestling matches then ROH would be the number one company and they would be filling arenas that sit 10,000+ fans. That’s not the case though, they can barely fill up a bingo hall.

I’m not arguing that people don’t want to see characters, however, just having a character isn’t enough, at the end of the day the fans are there to see wrestling and obviously want an entertaining match, which the Diva’s in recent times have not given us.

You do realize that a lot of the WWE Divas trained WITH the knockouts? They were trained by the same people, at the same place, and they were taught the same things. If the Knockouts could do it why couldn’t the Divas? If the knockouts were successful then so can the divas because they were trained exactly the same way.

What terrible logic to use, just because someone has trained with someone, does not mean that they will have the same abilities.

So we’re going to blame the knockouts for the ratings being lower than the WWE’s ratings? I guess that means we can also blame the divas for when Raw’s ratings fall below the 3.0 mark? TNA’s ratings are lower than the WWE’s because they have a horrible marketing team or because people don’t like what they see from everyone else. If you look at the ratings for each quarter hour then you will see that the TNA knockouts have been constantly some of the top draws. Even the ones that have gimmicks have been top draws. There have actually been times were the knockouts have outdrawn guys like Kurt Angle and Sting, who are suppose to be the top rating draws in the company.

But that surely means you can’t accredit TNA’s ‘success’ to just the Knockouts either. I’m not fully blaming the Knockout’s for TNA’s ratings, but according to you, the Knockouts are doing things right, if this was the case, more people would tune in to watch. The fans obviously aren’t interested in women’s wrestling, otherwise TNA would be getting higher ratings.

You said it yourself. I believe the saying goes something like if it aint broke, don’t fix it. Women draw as eye candy but they don’t draw as much as women wrestling. Also, male fans can still be happy with divas that have gimmicks. Divas having gimmicks does not mean the sex appeal is going to be remove. Divas can still be used as eye candy and have gimmicks, at the same time.

Exactly, why try to fix it? Nothings broken, the Diva’s and their matches have been the same way for years and the WWE/F has always been successful. The Diva’s don’t need gimmicks because it would be trying to fix something that isn’t broken, the Diva’s are fine as they are and always have been.

Yes, women that are used for eye candy are very low draws, but they are still draws nonetheless. But the majority of people want to see women wrestlers that have good gimmicks and can entertain people. There are some males who do like them only when they are wearing skimpy clothes and those males can still be pleased. Like I said, Divas having gimmicks does not mean the sex appeal will be removed. It will still be there so that the males who like it will be pleased. If they are given gimmicks and they still have the sex appeal, then the males who only like them for that will be pleased and the ones who watch wrestling to be entertained and for the gimmicks will be pleased to. Everyone wins; it’s basically a win-win situation.

How do you know whether they want to see women with gimmicks, if they’ve never seen it before. Also, why will people be pleased to just see gimmicks? Over the years there have been so many failed gimmicks that get no reaction, if were going by your logic, fans would have been happy just to see a gimmick, regardless of the fact that the wrestler may be terrible. A good gimmick gets nowhere if the wrestler can’t entertain the fans in the ring.

Tell that to the near 1.5+ million people who watch the TNA knockouts.

You can’t just make up figures, if your going to claim that many people watch TNA just for the Knockouts, you have to have some sort of source. Most of those 1.5 million are probably watching TNA for Kurt Angle, Sting, AJ Styles etc. anyway. If the Knockouts are so good, why aren’t more people tuning in? TNA gets lower ratings than ECW.

Tell that to Trish Stratus and Lita. When they were feuding people cared more about them than they did for the majority of males on the show. Why was that the case? Because people were entertained by them. I assure you that if the divas were to be given good gimmicks then people would be entertained by them.

I agree that the fans were entertained by Trish and Lita, but the sole reason for that was their unique in ring work. Neither needed a gimmick to get over, all they had to do was give good quality, entertaining matches, the same could be applied today.

The vast majority of wrestling fans prefer whatever it is entertaining, whether it be males or females. Gender doesn’t matter. As long as a wrestling fan is entertained then they will watch.

I disagree, if you had a show full of female wrestling, ratings would drop hugely, if you had a show with no female wrestling (e.g. Extreme Rules 2009) the ratings would not be affected. So there is some proof for my argument that fans enjoy the product just as much when there are no women’s matches on the card. However an all women’s PPV would never get good ratings and buys, and to dispute this would be ridiculous to no end.

There’s a big problem and the logic of wrestling starting with males and becoming popular because of males is flawed. You have to look at the time that wrestling started and realize that it wasn’t acceptable for women to wrestle. Many years after wrestling started women were allowed to wrestle but women’s wrestling was banned in several states. Don’t ask me why (because I don’t know) but it just wasn’t acceptable for women to be wrestling in some states. I’m sure they could have contributed a lot more if women’s wrestling wasn’t banned during the time wrestling was flourishing in popularity. It took many years for male wrestling to become popular and because there was a ban in women’s wrestling it took longer than it should have for it to become popular.

What does it matter if it wasn’t acceptable for women to wrestle? That does not change the fact that wrestling started with male wrestling, that is how wrestling became popular. We’ll never know if women could have had more of an impact at the start, so you can only look at how wrestling started with male wrestlers.

Fans don’t care if they get poor quality matches. The majority of fans just want to be entertained. If fans wanted good quality matches then ROH would be filling up arenas that sit 15,000+ fans and they would be the number one company in the world. But since it isn’t the case, they aren’t filling up arenas that sit 15,000+ fans and they are the number three company in America. Not even the world, but in America. If fans wanted good quality matches then people wouldn’t have cared about The Ultimate Warrior and he wouldn’t have been so popular.

People overhype ROH matches, they’re not that great. I didn’t say fans only wanted pure wrestling, but they want charisma, they want the fans to get them involved and get them cheering, just like Ultimate Warrior did all those years ago, it wasn’t his gimmick, the man oozed charisma, he got the fans going, with a look and charisma like his, he was always going to succeed.

I didn’t suggest that Mark Henry get removed from television. He’s actually getting a reaction from the fans so he should stay. There are however wrestlers who don’t get reactions at all or get them every once in a long while, case in point: Shelton Benjamin. In ECW they persisted to get Henry a reaction and it worked. The same thing in Raw, they persisted and it worked. There hadn’t been attempt to get Henry a reaction for many years and when they finally attempted it worked. Then you have Shelton Benjamin, who they’ve attempted to get over as a heel for ¾ years not and it still isn’t working. They’ve persisted and persisted yet it hasn’t worked for him. Shelton Benjamin is the perfect example that just because you persist with a male wrestler, it doesn’t mean there reactions are going to turn around.

You said the divas give poor quality matches yet you’re implying now that they don’t need to be quality wrestlers. So…why does it matter if they can give poor or good quality matches because according to you they don’t need to be quality wrestlers.

That’s just putting words in my mouth. What I meant was, the Diva’s don’t need to be Chris Benoit or Dean Malenko. However, they do need to be able to entertain the fans and sell a compelling match, without botching moves.

No you don’t. Warrior wasn’t very competent in the ring and look at how over he was during his time.
His gimmick was the thing that gave him charisma. The fact that he wore face paint, had colorful attire, and was full of energy when he ran towards the ring shows that he got over because of all of those things. If you take all of that away then you have a guy who has no charisma.

His face paint and attire didn’t give him charisma or energy, that was all Warrior, the fans cheered the intensity and the passion he showed in the ring, also he was not as bad in the ring as you are making out.

You don’t need charisma to pull off in-ring work. Like I said about Warrior, his gimmick allowed him to not have to use many moves. He was a poor in-ring worker but he let what he knew shine and hid anything else he might not have been good. Without a gimmick more would have been demanded from him in his in-ring work. They same applies for the divas. I have already explained why I think that giving a gimmick to a diva would solve things.

Charisma or gimmicks won’t improve in ring work, but if a wrestler has charisma and gets the fans excited/ chanting, obviously they are going to care about them more. I still fail to see your logic behind implying that a gimmick would improve Diva’s in ring work or charisma.

But you’ve implied that you don’t need to be a quality wrestler. So the divas’ not being good in the ring is completely irrelevant now. As far as mic skills go, some of the divas can hold their own on the mic. Having good mic skills is something that isn’t needed, it all depends what the gimmick is. Mic skills will just help them but there are gimmicks were they don’t need to have good mic skills to be successful. When it comes to mic skills, it all basically depends on what the gimmick is.

Your not understanding me, I don’t want the Diva’s to be putting on wrestling clinics, but at the moment they aren’t entertaining the fans, they botch moves, they don’t sell moves or impact very well, how would a gimmick improve this? And mic skills are very important in this day and age, but according to you, wrestlers don’t need ring or mic skills, just a gimmick? Mic skills are the very thing that get gimmicks and wrestlers to connect with fans.

Why do we need to bring in having main event matches into this? It’s quite clear that we aren’t going to see the divas in the main event in a very long time. It has only happened once and it will be a cold day in hell when it happens again. They won’t be in the main event not because they aren’t good but because Vince doesn’t want them in there. He knows it would be better to have John Cena in the main over a diva.

If they aren’t going to main event and draw big, then why would Vince give them gimmicks, just so we can see the exact same 5 minute match, if giving them gimmicks would not change their importance/ drawing ability, why bother giving them gimmicks at all?

Vince doesn’t know because he has never actually made a good attempt. It would be completely different if he tried and it failed. He won’t know until he tries it. I’m not saying I am correct but it also doesn’t mean Vince is correct. And I’m not denying that WWE remains the number one promotion in the world. Having gimmicks on divas can only help, but I am by no means saying that they aren’t going to be number one without gimmicks on divas.

Having gimmicks for Diva’s could hurt the WWE, they can only focus on so many things at one time and if they focus on Diva’s, other areas of the company may start to slip, which could displease the majority of fans causing them to stop watching. Giving Diva’s gimmicks may not hurt the WWE, but it very likely wouldn’t improve a thing.

I know gender has a lot to do it because there are a lot of sexist fans and I’ll accept that so I’m not being naïve. However, there are also a lot of fans who don’t care about genders, they just care if they are entertained or not. You can’t deny that either.

I won’t deny that there aren’t fans of the Diva’s, there are several on this forum, but unfortunately they are in the minority. Wrestling fans are sexist and would much rather see male wrestling, I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is. I don’t think there’s anything Vince could do, gimmicks or not, that would make the women out-draw the men.

About the promo time tell that to ‘Taker. I don’t remember him talking all that much yet he was still over. Also, no one is asking for male wrestling to be removed. I’m just asking for meaningless male wrestling to be removed. By meaningless I mean the male wrestling no one cares about, like Chavo vs. Hornswaggle. Also, you don’t need to have 10 minutes of promo time to get a gimmick over. A gimmick can get over in a 2 minute promo. For Example when Jericho turned heel and changed his gimmick he was all about calling fans parasites and hypocrites. He could have done that in 2 minutes. He didn’t need 10 minutes of promo times in order for his gimmick to get over. What he could have done in 10 minutes he could have done in 2 minutes.

You don’t remember Taker promos? What about all the Ministry and Coperate Ministry stuff, what about Paul Bearer & the urn. All of this was promo time, building the Undertaker up, which is sorely needed if your giving a wrestler a gimmick, male or female. Sure Jericho could get over in 2 minutes, but that’s one person. Apply that to a whole division and you’ve got a lot of promo time.

I disagree. A way to get a fan to react is by making them care about you. Currently fans don’t care about divas but with a good gimmick they could. It all depends on what the gimmick is though.

But surely they need mic skills to connect to the crowd, something that you have discarded as unimportant and basically agreed that these Diva’s aren’t great on the mic and would have trouble connecting with fans.

Crowd reactions mean absolutely nothing to be honest. If Vince wants to have John Cena in the main event of a pay per view then he’s going to put him in the main-event. If he doesn’t want him then he won’t put him there. It’s what Vince’s wants not what a crowd wants. As far as a huge ratings loss, the answer would probably be yes. People pay to see guys like John Cena in the main-event not Maria.

Crowd reactions obviously mean something, look at Jeff Hardy, He man with 2 strikes, a spot monkey who can’t talk on the mic. Vince has had no reason to put him in the main event, other that the huge pops he gets in every city. This shows Vince does listen to crowd reactions and if the Diva’s could wrestle and entertain like Jeff, there would be no need for gimmicks, they would be edging closer to the main event.

Well, I have seen the divas match and a couple of weeks ago I saw a good divas match in Michelle McCool vs. Melina at NOC. Now, I was surprised because I didn’t think I would ever see a good match that McCool was in, but they had a good match nonetheless. Also, yes you can hide things. If a diva performs a sloppy dropkick, with a gimmick (depending on it) she doesn’t need to use it all and it’s not something that would be demanded from her to use.

In your opinion, it might have been a good match, I didn’t min it, better than usual. However, the Diva’s match is not what’s being talked about or promoted. As per usual, the focus is on the male wrestling.

You don’t need vignettes, promos, and segments. Those things just help but aren’t necessary.

Yes they are, how else do you get a gimmick over so that the crowd recognise it? Gimmicks can’t just appear they have to be explained or at least elaborated on.

No one is asking for divas to be pushed over mid-carders. If they are going to be pushed then they need to be pushed over guys who people are bored by or don’t care about, like Chavo, Hornswaggle, e.t.c. Also, if a wrestler leaves it’s because they are insecure. They don’t like it at a women is a more valuable asset so they would leave.

Chavo and Hornswoggle are the current ‘comedy’ segments of the WWE, we’ve always had and will have these ‘comedy’ segments, just as we’ll always have Diva’s. These ‘comedy’ characters will not be put below Divas, because Vince obviously thinks that the fans love them, hell these ‘comedy’ segments, often get in the way of midcard pushes (see Mark Henry).

How is it wasting time if they would probably get the same time they do now? They can still put in the same effort they do now? And I still don’t understand how it wastes money.

The shows only have so much time, extra time for promos and vignettes would have to be found, thus taking away from other aspects of the show. As for money, costumes and props are inexpensive, but still a cost, writers have to be paid to write promo’s, filming costs and in the long run, if all Diva’s are given gimmicks, this would amount to much higher costs than they currently have.

 

[SK]

I’m going to make one final debate here without multi-quoting on why Diva’s don’t need characters.

I don’t believe Diva’s need characters or gimmicks for the simple reason that women’s wrestling is not what the majority want to see, giving them gimmicks would not improve their in ring skills or their ability to draw.

Wrestling fans are sexist, the males want to see males wrestle and the women want to see males wrestle. This is evident via crowd reaction, merchandise sales, ratings and PPV buys. The biggest pops go to males, males are at the top of the card, male’s matches are far more built up than the females and basically the whole concentration of the WWE is on male wrestling. This is how it’s always been, the system has worked. The Diva’s have never need gimmicks, they are a very small part of the show, they offer sex appeal and relief from the male wrestling. Giving Diva’s gimmicks would be pointless, it would not make people more interested in them and it would not improve their wrestling matches, WWE would be better concentrating on their midcard.

Giving the Diva’s gimmicks would not make the fans enjoy women’s wrestling more enjoyable, as fans would still see the same matches, with less impact, more botches and less exciting matches. Giving the Diva’s gimmicks would mean using valuable promo time to build them up and connect them to the fans. This would be pointless as the WWE would not have better Diva’s matches and they would not draw more. This promo time would be valuable to someone like Mark Henry/ Shelton Benjamin/ Kofi Kingston, who are all of more importance (to the majority) than the Diva’s.

Now I know some fans enjoy Diva’s matches and that’s fine, but they are in the minority, they can still enjoy the Diva’s as they are, giving the Diva’s gimmicks would not attract new fans and would just waste time.

The problem with women’s wrestling is not that they don’t have gimmicks, it’s that their in ring work is boring and predictable, it doesn’t draw the fans in like a male wrestling match does. If WWE could find the standard of wrestling that Trish and Lita reached, they may find more interest sparked in their women’s matches, but untill then, Diva’s should remain as eye candy.

At the Extreme Rules 2009 PPV, all matches involved all male wrestling matches, no Diva matches were featured on the PPV, this PPV managed to get 213000 buys, the Diva’s wrestling wasn’t missed that much, and I’m guessing this is because the Diva’s matches are considered ‘toilet break’ matches because of the unexciting sloppy matches that we are used to seeing in recent times. Gimmicks will not fix this, exciting female wrestlers will.

 

[Mr. TM]

Clarity of debate- 1 point
SkeptiKal was able best to stay within the debates, and both posters threw down great written pieces.

Punctuality- 1 point
SavageTaker was always on time, SK however missed some action.

Informative- 1 point
SkeptiKal was the man with the information. But all the bricks in the world cannot build you a house becaues he lacked the mortar known as:

Emotionality- 1 point
SavageTaker was in SK's face the entire time. His emotion was almost enough for him to receive the points for:

Persuasion- 1 point
Sure, he did have the emotion, but was it enough to persuade me. No. But luckily he backed everything up, and put together the best argument. SavageTaker takes this point

TM rates this 3 points ST to 2 points SK.

 

[Cena's Little Helper]

Clarity Of Debate: SK, I question some of your assumptions about women's wrestling, but, your argument was very clear. Your opening argument was as well, SavageTaker, but you went all over the place in your rebuttals.

Point: SK

Punctuality: SavageTaker gets this point.

Point: SavageTaker

Informative: This is a tough one, because I think some problems arose from the wording of this question. Honestly, I was looking for information from all of American women's wrestling, as that is how I interpreted the question. SK, you brought in information from TNA, so, I'm giving you the point here. But, I feel bad, SavageTaker, as you read the question literally and thus you aren't really at fault.

Point: SK

Emotionality: SavageTaker, I thought most of your argument and many of your criticisms were right on the money. SK, the one problem I had with your argument was that you seemed to think that many of the Divas in WWE aren't skilled wrestlers, when this is in fact not true. Sure, some of them are eye candy, but plenty of them are not only attractive, but very skilled in the ring. From what everyone on this board has been able to gather, in comparison to what we see in TNA, WWE Divas seem like they can't wrestle because they work a mandated "safe" style. SavageTaker, you readily took on all of SK's points, and thus you get the point here.

Point: SavageTaker

Persuasion: You show plenty of promise in the debates here, SK. But, keep some of the points I have raised here in this post in mind. For the reasons that I listed in emotionality, I'm giving this point to SavageTaker.

Point: SavageTaker

tdigle's Score
SavageTaker: 3
SK: 2

 

[Luther_Hull]

Clarity Of Debate: SK presented a more well rounded debate.

Punctuality: ST, as SK was a tad late on some.

Informative: SK was lined up with the most ammo here.

Emotionality: ST appeared to believe in what he was debating the most.

Persuasion: However, SK swung me to his side of the debate.

ST 2 - 3 SK

 

[Bernkastel]

Clarity Of Argument: both arguments were extremely well written and flowed very nicely… I’m spitting the point.

Point: Skepikal and Savagetaker

Punctuality: Skepikal was a tad late on some of the posts, thus the point is awarded to Savagetaker.

Point: Savagetaker

Informative: Good back and forth efforts between the two. Near endless amounts of points and counterpoints. Both debaters clearly got their messages across and went out of their way to emphasize their main points. I’m splitting the point.

Point: Skepikal and Savagetaker

Emotionality: Though both debates were full of passion, Savagetaker went out of his way to counterpoint Skepikal’s argument in several places.

Point: Savagetaker

Persuasion: The last post of Skepital argument was a fantastic conclusion, even if you disagree with his stance he basically simplified his argument and restated his main points.

Point: Skepikal

Echelon’s rating

Skepikal: 2 points
Savagetaker: 3 points

 

[Marquis]

Clarity Of Argument- SK
I found both very well written, but I award the point to SK. While both were well written and spaced, SK's opening argument was broken down a bit more and made neater.

Punctuality-ST
SK was late, so the point goes to ST.

Emotionality-ST
Without a doubt I'm giving this point to ST. He didn't hold back when arguing with SK and was very opinionated and in your face as TM put it.

Informative- ST
While both provided a decent amount of information, I also award the point to SK like Diglett for bringing up information on TNA to help back his claims.

Persuasion- ST
Because of how ST debated he persuaded me. With being opinionated and in your face, he came off as truly believing what he's debating is correct, and persuaded me to believe so.

ST- 4 points
SK- 1 point

 

[SK]

Informative- ST
While both provided a decent amount of information, I also award the point to SK like Diglett for bringing up information on TNA to help back his claims

So are you giving this point to me or ST? Because you say your giving it to me (like tdigs did) but you gave it to ST and scored it 4 points to 1, I'm not bothered, just clearing things up.

(feel free to delete this post after clearing it up)