As WWE Smackdown chugs along with pointless, demeaning "pageants" and relay races with text message voting for Divas, and WWE Raw is preoccupied with pushing Maria's Playboy spread without any backstory to their WrestleMania women's tag match, TNA is doing women's wrestling right.
Last week's Impact continued the ongoing streak of the TNA Knockouts drawing the best ratings each week. Before the tag match featuring ODB & Gail Kim vs. Angelina Love & Velvet Sky ("The Beautiful People" - love that name), Impact drew a 1.02 quarter hour rating. In the segment with the tag match, it jumped to a 1.14 - the highest quarter of the show. After their tag match, the next quarter hour dropped to a 1.09 (Kurt Angle's MMA sparring sessions). Even worse, the main event of Team 3D vs. Christian & Rhino dropped to a 1.01, the lowest quarter hour rating of the second hour.
It's not a one-time occurrence. Every week the Knockouts draw the best rating.
What does it mean? Is Awesome Kong just that over? Perhaps, and she's certainly the type of "break from the mold" that a women's division in this industry needed. But even more so, I believe there is a desire among all wrestling fans - male and female - to see women treated with respect as athletes. They can be sexy, they should be decent looking, but most important they should be treated as if they're serious athletes who are tough, clever, innovative, hard-working, and trying to win wrestling matches. They also should have something to fight over - a title that the promotion treats with respect.
Last year we ran a poll on PWTorch.com regarding the presentation of women in pro wrestling. Overwhelmingly, the option voted for was for women to be treated as athletes with serious matches and feuds that resemble top men's feuds. It seems if men want to watch women dance and prance in skimpy outfits, there are plenty of places to get that. Our poll indicates that what makes women in pro wrestling stand out as special is the ability to have a convincing wrestling match.
WWE for years has put a top priority on sex appeal and skimpy outfits with wrestling being a necessary evil to justify their existence on the show. TNA has approached it differently, and it's a winning formula so far. Would a one hour weekly show of just women succeed? It might. It's probably worth taking a stab at given the ratings performance of women so far.
The lesson, though, that TNA should take from the success of the TNA Knockouts division has less to do with women and more to do with how to succeed competing with WWE. The lesson is find out more ways to do things different than WWE does. Vince McMahon doesn't appear to be in any mood to "learn from the competition" or change his ways at all, so anything that TNA can do better than WWE will help them overcome the huge gap in brand identity, prestige, and market penetration.
TNA should also keep going with the Knockouts division, try to find more diverse looks and body types to fill out the division, and vigorously protect the women in the division from being demeaned or diminished. In other words, every women's title match on PPV should be among the final two or three matches on the show. Present the title as the premiere women's division title in the industry today, and keep touting that it's the only women's title that means anything.
From a booking standpoint, the TNA Knockouts may be drawing because what they're doing with them is the most basic, easy-to-follow feuds of anything in the promotion. There's a lesson in there, also.
It'd be nice if WWE took a cue from the success of the TNA Knockouts division and had fewer pageants and women who aren't athletes filling TV time and developed a more diverse female roster of fully trained athletes who are fighting over a title that is treated as prestigious.
