How do I relate that to the diva division? You look at the whole history of the diva division. There certainly has been change. As I have said before, the overall agenda the WWE is pushing is pretty much the same. What has really changed is their ability to get the job done with that same agenda they have liked to push for over a decade now. Is it natural change? In biology, natural selection isn't about some scientists in a lab deciding what traits they want a given specimen to have. It is nature doing it. It is the natural flow of things. What the WWE has been doing in the last few years is not going in a natural direction.
Go back to when the diva division started. You could understand why they would want to do it. Women like Sable and Sunny were connecting with the fans very well. Sable was starting to develop wrestling ability. And after a certain female wrestler had dumped the Women's Championship in the trash, that could be seen as another factor in wanting a women's division that showed favoritism to model-type women. Putting it simply, you can argue that it was only natural to take the women's division in this direction.
Following the great success they had with Trish Stratus, that is where things went wrong. The WWE tried to keep things going in the same direction they previously did. Problem is, the model-type women could not get the job done, particularly those pushed to be the centerpiece of the division. It was a female wrestler being pushed to put these women over and used as filler when they were not around that was succeeding. That would be Mickie James. The natural decision to make would have been to select Mickie James to be the centerpiece. Go with the flow of what the fans want. Give a worker that is earning that better career the career she earned. Let those with the best traits to succeed in that WWE environment win out. The WWE didn't do that. They have continued to push things in the direction they want to work. They are forcing things.
A lot of people like to bring up AJ Lee like she is the savior of the women's division. Many point out that the WWE pretty much made their own version of Mickie James. And that is it, they made her. They developed her as a periphery diva. She has been benefiting from the current dark age to get a lengthy title run. I am not taking anything away from AJ Lee, but she is not an indicator that the WWE is willing to let things go in a natural direction. They are still picking whom they want to succeed and trying to make them a success. This isn't even just about Mickie James or AJ Lee. The division outside of AJ is still a mess. Are those women getting fair opportunities? If another woman not pushed well gets over, will she get the push she rightfully earns? Or will she be used to put over whom the WWE wants to be a star, then depushed? The best thing in the diva division right now is a woman they selected to be a star and have engineered to be a star by utilizing traits from other women. That is not natural selection. If you want to believe AJ is a copy of Mickie James, you can say she is a "genetically-engineered" version of Mickie James. Speaking figuratively, of course.
What should the WWE be doing? Go with the flow of what fans legitimately want. Give these women fair opportunities and run with those women with the best qualities to succeed. Of course, pay attention to how they are succeeding. If you ever find yourself in a crisis situation and you need to really make a star because none of your women are connecting well with the fans, do what you have to do. That is pretty much what they did with AJ Lee. Again, I am not denying her success. I am just not going to say that she did in that diva division what Mickie James did in that diva division and that her success means things are getting better in the diva division in terms of them treating their women better. Right now, the WWE is still playing God. They are like those scientists in the lab that can modify traits of organisms. The WWE needs to do less of that and more promoting and developing what fans legitimately want to see.
Moving away from science, let me talk about a sport beside football. I have started to watch NBA basketball more this year. I don't watch the college games. With wrestling not entertaining me as much as it used to, I just decided to find something else to watch. And it also helps that Brooklyn, the part of New York City where I live, now has an NBA team. Anyway, is this the start of me making as many comparisons to basketball as I do football? We'll see.
When a player is fouled while in the act of shooting, they get to make free throws. Depending on where they were on the court when the foul happened, they will take either two or three shots. But there is more to the rule than just that. If the player that got fouled still ends up making the basket, the shot counts and he still gets a chance at one free throw. Count it & 1! I just like that rule. A player is hindered from getting a fair, legal shot, still makes it, and they still get a bonus. Football doesn't have that. If a receiver is interfered with when trying to catch a pass and still manages to catch the pass, which does sometimes happen, the penalty flag is picked up and the catch counts. No bonus yardage is added on. In basketball, you get a little bonus in the form of one free throw.
How does that relate to pro wrestling? You don't have fouls and penalties in the same way you do in basketball and football. You have screwjobs. You have people not being given fair shots to succeed by the company. What happens to those people that succeed from these situations and still get screwed out of the better pushes and careers? Fans usually speculate that they had to have done something wrong or are lacking something for them to get treated like that. Dirtsheets usually come up with some big stories. There are no officials to blow the whistle and penalize the WWE for what they do. They were not giving Zack Ryder a fair shot to get over. He got over on his own. What was his reward? The U.S. title? Yeah, after a few months of the WWE not really wanting to push him and finally using him to make Cena look like a hero. And Ryder soon got buried again. Mickie James got over from a career where no diva had ever done it. They kept pushing her the same way. No one brings that up. Where is she now? She was not given a fair shot to succeed, still succeeded, and got screwed out of it. I don't even need to ask what her "free throw" bonus should be in regards to the basketball analogy. Not a fair situation all around.
If you combine what I said about natural selection and basketball, the common theme is that the WWE is not running a fair diva division. They take things the direction they want it to go, not the the direction things should naturally go. And if a woman should succeed when she is not supposed to, overcoming that unfair opportunity, she doesn't get added respect or praise for what she has done. The WWE just continues doing what they want. What do I say should happen? The WWE should stop trying to control so much and they should take blame when they screw their own workers more. They can't just be able to turn it into a storyline to play it off. They need to be held responsible.
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