Smark Out Moment

Every Saturday, Divas Debrief runs down the week in women's professional wrestling. From the TNA Knockouts to the WWE and NXT Divas, the Debrief keeps you up to date on all the women carrying on the legacy of lady grappling.

WWE RAW

Ladies, gentlemen, and undecided, now's the time to hit the casinos and splurge on those lottery tickets because Hell has indeed frozen over. The proof? WWE actually moved the Divas from the pre-main event death slot on Raw and put just a smidge of effort into building the women's division this week.

Alicia Fox and Naomi are two of WWE's most talented Divas.

In the first hour, believe it or not, we saw Naomi earn a Divas Championship match by defeating Alicia Fox in a very athletic match to which I could scarcely pay attention thanks to all the bickering on commentary. But don't mistake me; the bickering was necessary and welcome.

This was a valuable slot on the show and appropriate use was made of it by having Paige and Cameron sit at the announce table and verbally rip one another apart. That's right, we got to actually hear the Divas Champion speak. Unfortunately for Cameron, Paige triumphed. No joke, the Champion utterly destroyed her and the internet, who has always been hard on Cameron's ring skills, has held nothing back in criticisms of her commentary.

I think, though, that we should be grateful. Cameron's may not have been the best performance on Monday, but people are talking about it and that is always good. I'm not saying I want her to be in the Championship picture ahead of Natalya or anything, but if the Divas division is to be repaired one needs to start somewhere and take it one week at a time.

However, just because Satan himself is heeding the Westeros warning of an impending winter and is finally able to start stocking up on treats from the Bluth frozen banana stand, we shant allow ourselves to count our chickens before they hatch. Fool me once, WWE, shame on you. Fool me fifteen times, shame on you again, dammit.

A fitting end to a great career.

Also on Raw, Vickie Guerrero was put into a match with Stephanie McMahon where the loser was the first to be thrown into a pool of slop and if Vickie didn't win, she lost her job. Through channeling her late husband, Eddie, Vickie managed to get the audience behind her for the first time in her career and even managed to fend off Layla, Alicia Fox, and Rosa Mendes, whom Stephanie had do her bidding.

In the end, Stephanie came from behind and shoved Vickie into the slop, though Vickie got sweet revenge by returning the favor in a well-executed exchange between the two that simply must be seen. The segment ended with both of them a mess, but Vickie was the one who left with her dignity and she gave the appreciative audience one last Eddie-style shimmy at the top of the ramp before we had to say goodbye to the most over heel in the industry.

WWE MAIN EVENT

There isn't much to be said about Main Event this week. Layla and Summer Rae brawled for the twenty-seventh time and the distraction cost Fandango his match with Bo Dallas. There ya' go. I guess WWE needed to compensate for the great placement of the Divas segment on Raw by practically leaving them out of the show on Tuesday. Such is the way of things.

Summer and Layla will finally clash this Sunday at Money in the Bank.

NXT

We saw the debut of Becky Lynch on NXT this week. She picked up a win over Summer Rae in another brief, throw-away segment, which is disappointing. The segment, mind you, not Becky's win. Ever since that mind-blowing match between Charlotte and Natalya, the NXT women's segments have been drowning in mediocrity.

Becky Lynch defeated Summer Rae in her debut match.

Now, I'm not usually one to jump to conclusions and I'm not going to start now, but I will admit that my mind has gone to some dark places. For example, lately I've been tossing around the possibility that Vince McMahon caught wind that some chicks down south stole the show at Takeover from the men and now he's sent out an executive order to put the kibosh on training these women to be compelling for the cameras.

These frantic theories are only fed by what I saw in Becky Lynch's debut. Every time a SHIMMER girl makes it to NXT/WWE, I'm thrilled and now is no different, but did she need to be given an Irish jig gimmick? Sheamus and Finlay love to fight, but Becky Lynch loves to dance? Did someone really look at the Divas and think, "Hmm, well, we've only got Summer, Emma, Layla, Cameron, and Naomi out there dancing. If we only had one more..."?

My point is this: welcome to the neighborhood, Rebecca Knox. We'll do... what we can.

TNA IMPACT

The Knockouts worked a great tag team match on Impact.

For all the faults in Total Nonstop Action, they show a certain respect for female wrestlers that just isn't found outside the independent scene. Sure, the Knockouts' storylines are lame, but so are the storylines for their male counterparts.

The Knockouts opened the show on Impact this week. Can you remember the last time WWE did this for Raw? Gail Kim teamed with Taryn Terrell to take on Velvet Sky and Knockouts Champion Angelina Love in a match that wasn't supposed to be anything special, but somehow it was. It's not like the match will go down in the history books or anything but what's special here is that this was just a plain old weekly TNA Knockouts match and it rivaled the quality of WWE's promoted pay-per-view Divas matches, and far outperformed many of them.

WWE has talented women who are simply misused, but TNA let the Knockouts loose this week on Impact. Taryn spent most of the match getting beat down by the Beautiful People and made a comeback late in the match, finally tagging in Gail Kim. Gail and Tayrn cleaned house and Gail picked up the win over the Knockouts Champion with one of the coolest finishing moves in wrestling, Eat Defeat.

All four of these women are good, but Gail Kim... Just, Gail Kim.

WWE SMACKDOWN

The ripple effect of having the Divas prominently featured on Raw was felt all week long, and not necessarily in a good way. Perhaps not in a bad way either, but there's an observation to be had here that because of the energy spent on building the current situation between Paige and the Funkadactyls, the minimum amount of time possible needed to be spent on Divas for the rest of the week. This is a double-edged sword and it's a gamble whether or not it will be beneficial to have the women featured less on the smaller shows in order to have more of them on Raw.

Naomi and Paige have a stare-down following the Champion's match.

Nonetheless, Divas Champion Paige defeated Cameron again on SmackDown in an encounter that lasted around 60 seconds. Bad. Post-match, more character progression between those two and Naomi. Good. After Cameron went down like a sack of dumbbells, she shoved Naomi into Paige and caused some tension between the two, and seemed quite proud of herself afterward.

Contrary to popular opinion, I think Cameron's playing her role well and for a scant few seconds she was holding her own against Paige. As a plus, Naomi got some time on commentary which was as needed as was Paige's commentary on Raw and she came off pretty natural. Everyone expects Cameron to get involved in some capacity in the Divas Title match at Money in the Bank between Paige and Naomi, but I hope the drama doesn't take center stage and steal from the quality or time of the match like I'm almost certain it will.

At this point, I almost don't want the Funkadactyls to split. After Naomi's talk about how "I like Cameron, she's just kind of a bitch that I deal with," I'm thinking it would be cool to have Naomi be the calm muscle of the duo who keeps Cameron, the chatty, reckless one, under control. Very Xena and Gabrielle.


SHINE WRESTLING

SHINE 20 went down on Friday and there were a few surprises. Here is a quick results rundown:

SHINE 20 featured two Championship matches.

Legendary (Malia Hosaka & Brandi Wine), accompanied by wrestling legend Leilani Kai, became the #1 contenders to the SHINE Tag Team Championship by defeating the S-N-S Express, the Buddy System, and Kimber Lee (who wrestled alone as Cherry Bomb was unable to make it to the show).

Crazy Mary Dobson defeated Amber O'Neal by disqualification when O'Neal attacked Dobson with a steel chair. O'Neal's originally scheduled opponent, Leah Von Dutch, also could not make the show.

Su Yung defeated Justine Silver.

La Rosa Negra defeated Shanna.

Candice LaRae defeated Navaeh.

Legendary defeated the Lucha Sisters (Leva & Mia Yim) to become the new SHINE Tag Team Champions after assistance from Leilani Kai.

Allysin Kay defeated Jessicka Havok in a Last Woman Standing match.

A match for the SHINE Championship between defender Ivelisse and challenger Serena Deeb ended in a draw.

It was a big week for the women of pro wrestling and it was quite the leap forward in quality for the development of WWE's Divas division. Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky and the trend of the Divas getting significant exposure on Raw will continue. Catch me here next Saturday when, hopefully, I'll be able to say we saw Paige and Naomi tear the house down at Money in the Bank.