Through much of WWE's history, women's wrestling has pretty much sucked. Sure, there have been glimmers of hope here and there, but women have generally been eye candy. Possession of actually wrestling or acting talent was a nice bonus, but not certainly not a requirement.

Women were not "superstars" or "wrestlers", they were "divas". The top championship for women was called the "Divas Championship" as recent as 12 months ago. **** this.

While all this bull**** was happening on the main roster, something special was happening on the developmental brand.

In July 2013 (ironically the same month that Total Divas premiered), Paige defeated Emma for the inaugural NXT Women's Championship. Yes, it was actually called that. At the very first live event on the WWE Network, Paige would successfully defend that title against Emma in a very good match. The fans at Full Sail (and this was before they got unbearable) were actually excited for women's wrestling.

On the Raw after WM 30, Paige would debut on the main roster and defeat AJ Lee for the Divas title. As main roster champion, Paige would be forced to relinquish the NXT championship. Could NXT's women's division survive?

In a word, yes. Over the next few Takeover specials, women would absolutely dominate the scene. Here are the Meltzer ratings for the NXT women's title matches:

Charlotte vs. Natalya: ****
Charlotte vs. Bayley: **3/4
Charlotte vs. Sasha: ***1/2
Fatal four way: ****
Sasha vs. Becky: ****
Sasha vs. Bailey: ****1/2
Ironwoman: ****1/4

It was awesome. Meanwhile on Raw, Brie/Nikki faced Paige/Emma in a match that lasted less than a minute, giving rise to the hashtag #GiveDivasaChance. Finally in July 2015, we got the debuts that people had been waiting for. Now Divas champion Nikki Bella was in the ring claiming that she had cleaned out the division and that no challengers were left in WWE. Cue the music of.....

Stephanie McMahon. Ugh. She comes out and says that there is a "revolution" with women in sports and that things are about to change. She brings out Charlotte and Becky. Then Naomi and Tamina come out and Stephanie decided that they need an ethnic friend, so out comes Sasha. The segment sucked and was probably the worst way to debut these women, but at the end, Sasha, Charlotte and Becky stood tall and fans were happy.

But the excitement faded fast. First, Raw took away everything on NXT that made these women popular in the first place: actual character development, decent amount of time for their matches, etc. Secondly, every ****ing women's match (sorry "diva's match") had the hashtag #DivasRevolution with commentary talking non****ingstop about how awesome this was. Nowadays, if something in wrestling is awesome, THE FANS WILL TELL YOU. Seriously, it's one of their favorite things to chant. Thirdly, the women were shoehorned into artificial trios of Team Bella, Team BAD and The Submission Sorority (quickly renamed into PCB because no one in WWE thought to google that).

Making matter even worse is that during all of this, the NXT women were still kicking ass. Sasha was doing double duty and was still on NXT as champion. Those last two matches in the Meltzer list above happened while on Raw, we got sub-3 minute matches and Miz TV. In one mind blowing segment, Nikki Bella (still Divas champion because we had to make AJ Lee not hold the honor of longest reigning champion anymore) actually said "wins, losses, who really cares?"

I think we're finally on the right track. That awful butterfly belt is gone. "Diva" is no longer a thing. Women are getting more time in their matches. But this angle really hurt when all they had to do was the same thing that made it amazing in NXT.

Aces and Eights was supposed to be the TNA version of the NWO I guess. It involves way too many people, goes on for way to long, and nobody really cares about it by the end.

The group formed on June 14th, 2012 when three masked wrestlers attacked Sting but didn't start appearing regularly until July 12th, 2012 where they attacked Sting, Hogan, and various other people regardless of face and heel status. Examples include Jeff Hardy, Bully Ray, and Austin Aries. This lasted for a while. The roster wanted to know who was behind A&8s, so in September - yes, September - they finally find a low level A&8s member and begin to question him. A&8s comes out and knocks out the low level member with a hammer so he doesn't talk or something.

Their first match was in October. For those keeping track, that's four months of come out -> beat someone up -> nobody knows whats going on. And you thought Hogan posedowns were bad to end Nitro for a month straight. The stipulation of the match was if A&8s won, they could have access to the impact zone. If not they'd leave. So now they can come into the arena instead of coming into the arena like they were doing before.


Keep in mind, for FOUR MONTHS these guys have been masked. Everyone is wondering who it could be. So after this match, one of them takes their mask off and the SIXTEEN WEEK question has been answered: It's



I think I was less disappointed by the gobbledy gooker.

So Sting challenges Dvon to a match. A&8s interferes causing a DQ. Get used to this.

Bully Ray calls out Dvon and they have a match. It ends when A&8s interferes. During the fray, another is unmasked as Luke Gallows. I love me big hootski, but this is not the types of reveals that will excite an audience.

Gallows (called DOC) and Dvon have a match vs Sting and Angle. It ends by disqualification. It is now November 8th. We are at the 20 week mark and there has been zero matches involving the stable without a DQ.

The next match was Kurth Angle and Garett Bischoff teaming against Dvon and a masked member. A&8s interfered.

On the December 6th episode, Dvon had a match for the TV title. He won. After interference from A&8s. 24 weeks and counting.

FINALLY at Final Resolution, Dvon/DOC/two masked members lost a match to Angle/Joe/Bischoff/Wes Brisco. The streak. Is over.

A&8s adds another member: Mr Anderson. Another member is unmasked: Knox. Yeah, that Mike Knox. Seriously.

There was a Bully Ray and Brooke Hogan wedding during this time period. Wow, is this the threads first mention of Brooke Hogan? Shame. Tazz announced he was in A&8s during the ceremony before the group beat down everyone. It's here we're also introduced to the concept of "THE HIGHER POWER" in aces and eights. Will that ever be resolved?!

Remember how Wes Brisco and Garrett Bischoff were the first people to beat A&8s? Turns out its a swerve bro. They were in A&8s the entire time or something.

Bischoff fought Joe in February, but A&8s interfered. Devon/DOC/Anderson fought Sting/Bully Ray/Hogan, but A&8s interfered by dragging Brooke Hogan out there and distracting Bully Ray.

Then there was a vignette where Angle attacks the VP of A&8s in their clubhouse, unmasks him, and berates him. But we never see the face. WHO COULD IT BE?!






IT WAS DLO BROWN!

There was a match to determine which team would have the advantage in their 5 on 5 lockdown match. A&8s won when A&8s interfered.

At lockdown, Brisco beat Angle due to A&8s interference.

Later that night, A&8s came out and helped Bully Ray win the title. Turns out he was the PRESIDENT OF ACES AND EIGHTS THE WHOLE TIME! This is like, April btw. So the big payoff is THAT DUDE THAT HAS BEEN FIGHTING A&8s THE ENTIRE TIME FOR TEN MONTHS WAS JUST KIDDING THE WHOLE TIME. MASTER PLAN.

At Slammiversary, Dvon defeated Joseph Park thanks to A&8s beatdown. Then lost to Abyss. But that story deserves an entry of its own.

At some point Bully Ray lost the title when A&8s interference didn't work, but then got it back when Tito Ortiz - who was also a member of A&8s - interfered. Then Brooke Tessmacher joined A&8s.

Anderson had a fallout and fought Bully Ray, which ended when A&8s interfered. He finally lost the title to AJ Styles, after A&8s tried to interfere.

Finally, in November of 2013 - a good 17 months after the start - the group was disbanded when Anderson beat Bully Ray. They held a funeral the following week and it was over.


17 months
maybe 10 total matches that didn't have an interference
big reveals like dlo brown being in charge
people joining for no reason
people being in there the whole time despite fighting against them


none of this **** made any sense







How does Taz feel about the angle?

- the Rock/Cena issue hijacking the main event of WrestleMania 27, and killing The Miz dead in the process

- announcing the WrestleMania main event a year in advance, and not seeing one of the participants for another six months

- ruining the red-hot Miz/Truth angle (and killing The Miz AGAIN) at Survivor Series just to finally get some conflict between Cena and Rock

- and last but certainly not least, The Rock destroying his legacy as one of the greatest talkers in the history of the business with utter garbage like this:



and this (starts at 4:15):

This beaut was the brainchild of Raven who was coming back from rehab and felt he needed something extra special to mark the occasion of his failed stint in rehab. He and Sandman came up with this piece of crap. Somehow they thought it was a grand idea to have a wooden cross built ahead of time and then stashed under the ring. Then at the right time Raven and his henchmen would pull it out and keep it as concealed as possible while they strapped Sandman to it. Then they wrapped barbed wire around his head to simulate the crown of thorns. Since they did such a good job of keeping everything out of view of the fans and the camera, the first anyone saw of this was when they hoisted the cross up and there was Sandman strapped to it like giant turd.

Speaking of people in attendance being offended by this, one rather important person who was in attendance was Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle who was thinking of signing with the promotion. He was a religious person and when he saw this, not only did he refuse to sign with ECW, he demanded his payoff right then, threatened legal action if his face was shown on their television show.

And once again to put the whipped cream on this Hot **** Sundae, Raven came out after the fact and gave the least inspired "for those who were offended" type apology. Bravo, ECW. Bravo.

I'm not going to give the complete write up, since it wouldn't hold a candle to LKJ's write up of the whole Angle in the Monday Night War thread. I will however highlight the important points on the way to the match.

It started at Halloween Havoc when after Hogan beat Savage the main event, Piper came out to confront him. He brought up how Higan never beat him while they fueded during the 80's, and some other nonsense. This set the stage for Starrcade in December.

It was followed up with some work on the Nitros leading to WW3 in November m. It was during these Nitros where Bischoff was outed as being a member of the nWo. All in all it was fairly decent building toward their match

At World War 3 they would have the contract signing for Starrcade. Now for those who don't know, this was a contract that was drawn up by Piper himself and agreed to by Hogan with zero negotiation. So the contract that was signed was 100% on Piper's terms. This will come into play at the end.

After WW3 again they had some decent storyline work leading into Starrcade. But this time they were leaving out one specific detail of the match. And honestly if you didn't know what to look or listen for, you probably wouldn't have noticed that it was missing. You also would have probably assumed something, and I'm sure that WCW was banking on that.

On the night of the show everything was proceeding in WCW fashion. The early matches were delivering and the later ones were flopping. And they were hyping the main event, but that one detail was still missing the entire night. Then we reached the main event. Michael Buffer did his thing, but even he didn't elaborate one way or another on this particular detail. So the match happens and it was your typical WCW main event, and even had Piper winning with a sleeper hold. And as his hand was raised the crowd eagerly awaited him to be awarded the belt. But alas, it was not meant to be. Apparently this was a non title match but WCW felt that it was unnecessary to inform their fans that this was the case. Even Dusty Rhodes, who was on commentary, wasn't aware that it was non title. He couldn't understand why Piper didn't have the belt. It wasn't until Hogan got back in the ring after confronting the Giant where we got confirmation that it was a non title match.

So to summarize, WCW pulled a bait and switch with their main event on their biggest show of the year. Oh and in a match where the challenger had the contract drawn up on his terms. So for whatever reason, Piper wrote a contract and decided on his own that it would be non title. Sounds legit. At least have Hogan make him at that stop before signing so that the fans aren't getting totally ****ed. Naturally they wound up having a title match two months later in a cage that sucked even worse than this match did. **** you, Hulk Hogan