The Intro
It’s been a weird week, so you’ll just have to excuse me if the column is a little more scathing and sarcastic than usual. I did, after all, get ‘let go’ yesterday, a decision my employers ultimately took because they felt I had a – wait for it – bad attitude. Really? Me? With a rep like that, you’d think I was the kind of guy who was unnecessarily cynical and harsh, the kind of guy you just know has been struggling all his life to rid himself of a chip on his shoulder he’s had pretty much since birth.

But don’t worry, readers. I am not that kind of guy. And that’s why this week’s Poll Position takes an in-depth look at the soulless, talentless whores of WWE and TNA, and asks the average male wrestling another critical Poll Position question: “Did you really just jerk off over that?”

Alright, alright. I kid. The question was about Divas and Knockouts, but we’re a little more circumspect than that. I‘m not going to discuss the women of wrestling and not at least peek into my own memories, some of which have very little to do with the in-ring abilities of their subjects, but if you came here for tits, you’re out of luck.

Mostly.

The Results

Clearly, the secret to making these polls work is offering a little more in the way of choice. It may well have been the same ten or eleven dudes voting in the poll this week, but I gave them multiple votes, thus artificially inflating my numbers and making me look far more over here at Inside Pulse than I actually am.

I consider graphics like the one above my equivalent of, “More people watched Raw this week than believe in Allah,” or whatever the fucking hell those bits either side of the commercials on WWE shows say. I honestly don’t know, as I haven’t watched a live wrestling program since the advent of Tivo, which would likely upset the WWE brain trust far more than any of the other bullshit I’ve filled this space with since becoming an IP columnist.

Twenty-seven votes, folks. That’s more than Ron Paul ever got.

The Analysis
Other – 4%
There was a vote for Other, but nobody actually pointed out anything specific in the thread, so I’m going to use this space to talk specifically about the TNA Knockouts and about booking.

One of the things Iain Burnside mentioned in the forum discussion was that TNA’s quarter-hour ratings routinely show that more people tune in to see the Knockouts than the main events. As much as I enjoy Iain (bring back Pulse Wrestling Q&A, fucker!), I was slightly dubious about this claim, so I went ahead and did some research…

Two weeks ago, TNA did a 1.13 rating overall. The main event (Styles, Sting, and Hernandez versus The MEM) did a 1.04, while the debut of Hamada (in a hardcore match against apparent ratings queen Daffney) did a 1.20. This is not an isolated incident. Three weeks prior to that, a Knockouts tag featuring Sarita and Taylor Wilde taking on Alissa Flash and Traci Brooks posted a 1.32 and was the highest rated segment on the show. In fact, the history of TNA ratings, especially over the last eighteen months, shows a very obvious trend of viewers tuning in for the Knockout matches and then switching off immediately afterwards.

Why is that?

The answer must surely be booking. We’re going to talk about talent and about looks and all of the other reasons we like to watch gals grapple later on. Here in Other, I want to focus on the job TNA has done of booking the Knockouts division, not only in comparison to the Divas, but up against the rest of the TNA product. You can analyze it all you want, but the numbers speak for themselves. More people want to watch Sarita and Alissa Flash than want to sit through the main event. That right there tells you all you need to know.

By the way, that isn’t me taking another of my many pops at TNA’s shitty creative department and unbalanced booking strategy. That’s me pointing out that solid creative work elevating deserving talent through well-executed hype and good matches works. It fucking works. Alissa Flash and Sarita had been on TV all of three weeks when that 1.32 tag match took place. Neither one of them is brain-meltingly hot. Sarita had a great build-up and offers lucha-style acrobatics that are a novelty in the Knockout division, and Flash impressed with a more-than-solid in-ring debut and a look that immediately set her apart from the likes of The Beautiful People.

And – pay attention here – the audience wanted to see them wrestle.

I’m on record as saying that the Kim/Kong feud that began the elevation of this division is one of my favorites of the last couple of years, and this is one area where TNA hasn’t dropped the ball. I don’t know who’s booking the Knockouts at this point, but if they continue to focus on basic, effective storylines, talent that’s more than fake tits and spray-tans, and matches that demonstrate how women’s wrestling is so much more than glamor models rolling around in bikinis, they will continue to produce the best segments on Impact.

They’re smart, sexy, and powerful – 7%
I thought the school holidays were over. Seriously, any young female who picks a Diva as a role model is going to grow up with a laundry list of insecurities, and any dude who checked this particular option has a lot to learn about real women in the real world. Regardless of the positive things I am going to say about women in wrestling during this column (and I’m going to say a few), it all comes with a giant fucking disclaimer tacked on the beginning, and that disclaimer goes a little something like this:

There are businesses that objectify and demean females as regularly as wrestling does, and there are businesses with a similar pay differential and level of respect between the sexes. But there isn’t a business in the civilized world that treats female employees with the disdain, disgust, and total lack of respect that wrestling does. How anyone can see a female performer in such an environment as a role model is beyond my capacity to understand.

They’re fucking hot – 19%
The first female wrestler I ever found hot was Madusa Miceli. Without further ado, I would like you to check out the following clip, which is from the bikini contest that – in retrospect – really dragged down the quality of WCW’s Beach Blast ‘92, an otherwise decent PPV. Watching it now, I can’t for the life of me understand what it was that I found attractive about Ms. Miceli, but what the fuck are you gonna do? I was thirteen.

I mention that particular segment of that particular event because it’s the only time I’ve felt that a woman in wrestling really got me going – when I‘d just become a teenager, was horny as fuck, and had no idea about the opposite sex. Sure, there have been a few other ladies I’ve thought were cute over the years (Spice of the Nitro Girls, Maria, and – of course – Stacy Keibler) but even then, it was always cute by wrestling standards. It’s like having a favorite porn star. There’s just no correlation to qualities that any reasonable human being would find attractive in the real world.

There’s a lot of talent in the women’s scene, and it’s not like the guys aren’t wearing those little tiny trunks – 22%
It’s heartening to see this snatch second place in the poll. Having briefly touched upon the ladies in a couple of my columns, the general response had led me to believe that there were one or two passionate defenders of women’s wrestling and a ton of guys unable to see Divas or Knockouts as anything more than cheap whores who are only even stroke material at a stretch.

Without wanting to go back and blow my big gay horn again (and yes, I really did just type that), wrestling as a spectacle is about 75% sex to begin with. Given the ratio of male viewers to female, and the accompanying ratio of segments featuring male performers to those featuring female (especially in the WWE), it’s difficult not to take a step back and have yourself a chuckle. To my mind, there’s a parallel to be drawn between  this approach and the earlier films of John Woo, where an overriding theme of homoeroticism was given context by scenes that appeared to mock the perception of women and traditional family values by making them ridiculous to the point of parody. That’s how I feel about the Divas (and the Knockouts, though to a lesser extent). It’s very difficult to take them seriously.

Of course, then I get to thinking about how fucking ridiculous wrestling is anyway, and I shrug my shoulders and put my grand theories back in the box for another day. After all, there are many more pathetic, talentless male performers in the mainstream promotions than female, and there are several divas who have made more of an effort to be improve their in-ring performances over the last few years than the like of John Cena, who hasn’t added anything fresh to his repertoire in almost a decade.

They’re cheap, easy, and exploited – 33%
It doesn’t mean there isn’t talent there, and it doesn’t mean that male performers aren’t exploited, too. All it means is that the Smart, Sexy, And Powerful tagline WWE has chosen to put on its female performers ought to have provoked an epic backlash. All it means is that the wrestlers who have routinely bagged the highest quarter hour ratings on TNA’s television shows are paid significantly less than the bloated, past-their-prime motherfuckers stumbling around the ring during the main events. Calling the vast majority of female performers ‘easy’ isn’t fair and is probably more of a reflection on promoters, dirt sheets, and male fans, but a business as relentlessly patriarchal as wrestling is always going to have more stories about legendary whores than it does about legendary female workers. There’s a valid school of thought that says every worker in today’s wrestling business is exploited, but a truly talented female performer makes less than her male equivalent, deals with the prospect of being routinely humiliated both onstage and off, and has to work with performers who have little to no in-ring training or ability, dramatically increasing the risk of injury.

Whichever way you turn it, that’s exploitation.

The Position
Honestly, this is a hard one to call. I think being critical to the point of disgust is the only sane response to the vast majority of mainstream women’s wrestling. That said, recent events in TNA lead me to believe that we could be on the cusp of a small breakthrough that could push legitimate female performers further into the limelight than they’ve ever been. Rumor has it that the Knockouts are going to be given their own TV show, and it seems that TNA is dramatically increasing the size of their female roster to prepare for just such an event. This has the potential to be something pretty special for female performers.

It also has the potential to be yet another cavalcade of plastic boobs, bullshit storylines, and bikini mudfights, but those of us who genuinely appreciate gals who know how to work live in hope.

As for The Position, I just can’t get passed the exploitation bit. I’m with the majority this week.

The Pimpage
Andy Wheeler runs roughshod over Raw (and Summerslam). “It’s like there was a bag of body parts in the back and Shawn pulled ‘eye‘.”

And…uh…that’s kind of it for stuff I liked this week. Sorry, Pulse guys. I cannot tell a lie.

The Future
Next week, I’ll be whipping out Poll Position’s crystal ball and casting my bloodshot, hungover eyes over the responses to the question, “What Does The Future Of Wrestling Look Like?”

Get involved HERE.

Before that, I’ll be putting a lid on Jim Cornette’s shitty week by using his appearance as Guest Booker on the Kayfabe Commentaries to put myself over and point out everything that’s wrong with his fantasy booking of the legendarily botched Invasion angle.

I actually enjoyed the thing, which is a minor miracle considering it’s a couple of guys talking about wrestling for three fucking hours. But we’ll get to that in a couple of days. Look out for it.