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THREE STEPS TO REBUILDING THE TNA KNOCKOUTS DIVISION

When TNA announced that they would be launching a knockouts division a few years back at TNA Bound For Glory, I was skeptical, considering the WWE’s track record with women’s wrestling. However, I was proven wrong in the early days of the divisions existence, mainly due to the excellent talent roster. Wrestlers like Awesome Kong, Gail Kim, Tracy Brooks, Jacqueline, Angelina Love, Roxxi and ODB are formed a solid foundation for the division.

Fast forward a few years later, while there is still a good roster of women’s wrestlers in TNA, the division has gone from “must see TV” to “mostly skipped TV.” Some people who watch TNA point the fact that both the TNA Knockouts Title and TNA Knockouts Tag Team Titles have been devalued, while some point to the poor storylines in the division and others point to the fact that TNA has started to put looks before talent in the division. In this column, I’m going to provide my three steps that I believe will help rebuild the once great TNA Knockouts Division.

Step #1: When It Comes To The TNA Knockouts Title, No Title Changes For Six Months

Did you know that in the last six months (April to October), there has been six total TNA Knockouts Title changes, which is the equivalent of one title change per month. Following the bouncing ball here…Angelina Love defeated Tara to win the title via Lockbox Challenge (4/5/10)…Madison Rayne (teaming with Velvet Sky) pinned Tara (teaming with TNA Knockouts Champion Angelina Love) to win the title in a tag team match (4/18/10)…Angelina Love defeated Madison Rayne by DQ to win the title (7/11/10)…Madison Rayne was given the title back by Earl Hebner after a reversed decision (7/13/10)…Angelina Love defeated Madison Rayne to win the title (8/9/10)…Tara pinned Velvet Sky in a Fatal Four Way Match to win the title (TNA Knockouts Champion Angelina Love & Madison Rayne were also in the match).

Here is another interesting piece of information, of those six title changes, the actual champion was only pinned once to lose the title (Angelina Love defeated Madison Rayne to win the title - 8/9/10 -). There was a time when one could argue that the TNA Knockouts Title was ranked amongst one of the tops titles in the company, but that is no more. To rebuild the title, which is the centerpiece of the whole division, the title cannot change hands every month. There cannot be a cornerstone of the division if you keep on changing the stone, because at some point, the division will break beyond repair. A foundation is a very hard thing to build, but it is a very easy thing that can be torn apart, brick by brick.

Step #2: Find Four Tag Teams To Challenge For The TNA Knockouts Tag Team Titles

Is a championships really worth anything if the champions (currently Taylor Wilde & Hamada) have nobody to defend their titles against? When you look at the brief history of the TNA Knockouts Tag Team Titles, you will find four teams that held the gold (Taylor Wilde & Sarita, Awesome Kong & Hamada, The Beautiful People and Taylor Wilde & Hamada). Out of those four teams I have just mentioned, only one team was an established tag team (The Beautiful People) that won the titles. While it seems that the male version of the tag division is on the rise, the female version seems to be in a long pause.

The problem is that outside of The Beautiful People, TNA hasn’t established a formidable team the fans could get behind to challenge the champs. So, just off the top of my head, I’m going to put together four teams TNA already has together and could put together to make a run in the tag division.

A. The Beautiful People (Angelina Love & Velvet Sky)

B. Madison Rayne & Tara

C. Pretty Crazy (Lacey Von Erich & Daffney)

D. Mickie James & Sarita

At least in my near future, the WWE will never take their women’s division seriously enough to even consider creating a tag title for them. Which if your TNA, means that you have a golden opportunity to present something that the competition doesn’t have, but TNA has failed at that thus far.

Step #3: K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Stupid

As a professional wrestling fan, there is nothing that annoys me more than wrestling storylines make very little or no sense at all. The majority of this past Summer and into this Fall, the TNA Knockouts, mainly all four members of The Beautiful People and Tara, were involved in a storyline that cannot be explained without my head exploding. The point should be simple here, if the storyline is to convoluted to understand, then very few will get behind it. Lets take a short peek at three storylines that occurred in the first year of the TNA Knockouts Division…

A. Gail Kim & Awesome Kong feud over the TNA Knockouts Title

B. Angelina Love feuds with Gail Kim because she was jealous of her fellow Canadians success

C. The Beautiful People feud with just about every TNA Knockout because they felt they were better than all of them

The theme of all three of those feuds was “K.I.S.S.”, because they were all simple and the majority of the fans had some emotion invested in the feuds. Convoluted only works when the outcome is understandable, but simple storylines generally work because everybody can understand what’s going on.

You can contact David Tees at bigtees360@yahoo.com

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