Maria is obviously having issues with Gail Kim. She cost Gail Kim the title. And now this. Let me tell you how I would like to see this feud go. I have said many times that TNA should start to build new stars in the KO division and stop having Gail Kim just keep dominating title matters. This current situation can be the perfect way to transition her to something else. The obvious story to tell is that Gail Kim will be the one to knock Maria out of power. But put more on the line. If Gail wins, she gets to run the KO division. Just to make things balanced and add more to the feud, if Gail loses, her TNA career is over. Gail would obviously win. Maria could have some heels try to assist her during the match, because we all know Maria is no match for Gail Kim. Gail can overcome them herself, or have some other face KOs help her out. Maria gets her comeuppance and Gail Kim gets something relevant to do for the rest of her time in TNA that keeps her out of the title picture for a while. She will still probably get one more "thank you" run before she does retire, but other women get a legitimate chance during this time. Of course, Gail Kim has to be willing to do this.
For most of her run since coming back to TNA in 2011, I would not say Gail Kim was really the centerpiece of the division in the same way the WWE has a centerpiece. She was a part of TNA's rotation for a while. There was a span when the title went from Brooke Tessmacher to Madison Rayne, back to Brooke, to Tara for a while, to Velvet Sky, to Mickie James, and then to ODB before Gail Kim got it again. During this time, not only did Gail Kim not hold the title, but she was not featured as that serious of a threat to the title. She got title shots, but so did other women. She was sometimes used to put over other women. She got some non-title stuff to do, but not always anything too major. Her feud with Taryn Terrell during this time was praised, but it didn't get really heated until last year. It is not unusual for the centerpiece to sometimes trump title matters, but I don't feel Gail Kim really did that back then.
Recently, Gail Kim is looking more like a true centerpiece. She is just coming off a lengthy title reign. Her feud with Maria feels more important than the KO title. The Decay kidnapped her. It just seems a lot of things are running through Gail Kim right now. She is getting better creative investment in her. If Gail was more over, I would say TNA should just keep going with her until she does retire. But she's not.
There are a lot of young women in TNA and in the independent scene that can use a great push. TNA cannot count on taking women from the WWE and running on their star power. WWE doesn't release people on a regular basis anymore. With the recent feminist revolution, female wrestlers there may not likely want to quit to come over to TNA. TNA has to do something they have never really been great at doing. They have to make their own stars. And it might be easier if Gail Kim was doing something on the periphery of the title scene. Gail simply losing to these other women is not enough. TNA does not need to job her out. These younger women need better creative investment and hype. Maybe TNA can practice with Gail Kim now with how they are pushing her, but they eventually have to give the younger women that kind of treatment.
Back to Maria. I have said before that TNA can beat the WWE at their own game. The WWE has pretty much beaten their own diva division into the ground. There is supposedly a new women's division there, although they still have divas, like Lana, Summer Rae, and Maryse, who returned one night after debuting the new Women's Championship. And TNA has a woman that doesn't represent serious women's wrestling get a big push. I am not against eye-candy performers in wrestling. Even if they never become serious in-ring workers, these women can still find a role and often be very entertaining. And I think this current storyline with Maria in TNA has great potential, especially if TNA handles it like I mentioned before. But from the standpoint of fans of serious women's wrestling, TNA's recent actions might be viewed as dumb. Oh well!
TNA has always had eye-candy women in their KO division. Even when things were a lot more respectable and you would read reports of TNA's women's segments drawing the highest ratings, there were eye-candy women around. And for the most part, TNA has done a great job integrating these women into what they do. Taryn Terrell, an eye-candy diva from the WWE that never looked like a serious in-ring worker there, looked legit in TNA last year. Not only could she handle herself in the ring, she had an appealing look and was portraying a great heel character. And even though Maria is not treated as legit, she is still getting matches. You have a respectable women's division that was pretty efficient that featured both female wrestlers and eye-candy performers, some of which became solid in-ring workers.
I cannot say that about the WWE right now. Yeah, wrestling fans are so excited about "divas" being dropped, the new title, and women's wrestling being taken seriously. Respectability is obviously there. But they are very inefficient. They have a ton of dead weight on the roster. They cannot possibly consistently feature even the major female wrestlers (Charlotte, Paige, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch). With the rotational system TNA runs, there might be some periods where certain women were left with nothing to do for a while, but it isn't as bad as the WWE right now. TNA never had this much dead weight. There are women not going anywhere that you just know are not going to get the opportunity to go anywhere, like Tamina and Alicia Fox. The WWE also does not have great characters and their feud development is dull. All this hurts their ability to be efficient.
And the WWE, so far, has not done a great job integrating eye-candy workers into the new division. There are still divas there. And Lana was a great one. Instead of the WWE keeping the ball rolling with her, even if only in the periphery, they bring back Maryse. The WWE cannot just use these women as jobbers to the female wrestlers and only let them beat other women being pushed as lowly as them. It was not unusual to see eye-candy divas be used as jobbers even in the golden age. Because they lacked wrestling credibility and were not treated as serious threats, I would not call them credible jobbers. But what kept these women over is that they were still given meaningful things to do to help portray their characters and their sex appeal. Divas right now are not consistently getting that. Consistency matters. Lana never got pushed to the moon, but she got over because the WWE put her in a position to do her act and be sexy. And that is all it takes. And now they are doing some of that with Maryse. But will she eventually get lost in the shuffle? A lot of wrestling fans do not want these type of women to get involved in too many of the matches because they will hurt match quality. Okay, but that does not mean they should be pushed so inconsistently and poorly.
TNA has definitely dropped the ball with some women over the years. You can criticize them for pushing Maria. But for all their faults, I would say they have done a better job of balancing a respectable, efficient women's division with featuring both solid wrestlers with eye-candy performers than the WWE has been doing in the last few months.
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