The Wrestling Observer Newsletter has a piece in its latest issue regarding WWE’s decision to produce an all Divas season of NXT 3. Read the details below:
The announcement of an abbreviated third season of NXT, which starts on 9/7, will be an all women’s show.
The lame duck show on Syfy will end its season on 10/1, with a live show in Oklahoma City as part of a three-hour WWE live block that will include the station’s debut of Smackdown.
The decision to go all women must have been made very recently, because they had been filming 12 wrestlers at FCW, eight men and four women, for the season. At the time the idea was four men and four women in the short season, but it was changed instead to six women.
Part of the reason is both a hope that perhaps the show will do better ratings with women and they can get a television deal with another station out of it, or the freak show aspect with Aloisia can build up ratings to where Syfy will change its mind and renew the show.
Another aspect revolves around unhappiness with many of the women on the roster and looking for replacements. Apparently the talent relations side was upset with the behavior of several of the current women in recent weeks, particularly when much of the roster was stationed in Los Angeles for the week of SummerSlam. While the publicized problems got out involving Tiffany (suspended indefinitely for a fight with her husband, Drew McIntyre, that wound up with her getting arrested), and the behavior of Serena, they were apparently not the only ones who made scenes in public that didn’t get out, and the company right now is very strict regarding the image its wrestlers show to the public because of promises to corporate sponsors about a wholesome company image.
With the announcement of the cast last night, there’s already been a backlash from most wrestling fans claiming that an all women’s show is doomed. However, until the show airs next week and the ratings come out, it’s too early to judge in my opinion. Looking back at the 2006 Diva Search finale that aired on USA Network (with Layla crowned winner), that scored a respectable 1.0 rating. Meanwhile, last December’s New Year’s Knockout Eve also scored a 1.0.
If WWE can go in a direction where the show really delivers on the entertainment factor, a la Bravo’s ‘Real Housewives’ (which delivered record ratings on Monday night), I think the show could catch onto fans even outside of the wrestling sphere too.
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45 Comments
Anything with Naomi Night in it is good.
I like the idea they are pushing. With the mix of size, talent, and personality they have, it would be a good way to reach out to females to get into wrestling.
That being said the group also has alot of diversity in it. This is probably the most diverse yet. Im not just saying that because im a Diva fan. (Im a wrestling fan in general). We have the largest diva in history (Alosia) , a 1 year wonder (Naomi), a “Pocket Rocket” (AJ), a Linthuain comedy act (Aksana who can act really funny), a talented goldigger (Maxine) and a diva already familiar with the fans (Jamie). Its gonna be a pretty good season.
I’m sure the majority of the women wrestling fans will turn into it plus a lot of other wrestling fans in general will check it out too. I would laugh so hard if they got better ratings than the first two seasons lol. Looking foward to it.
I personally don’t want this to look anything like ‘Real Housewives,’ but I do understand the need to make it entertaining. Wrestling isn’t a lot of these girls forte but if you can make people interested in what goes on outside the ring, they might be able to overcome that obstacle.
As a fan of woman’s wrestling, I hope it does do well. It would be nice to show the WWE that the woman are capable of bringing in ratings and money.
I think that some diva haters might also see just to criticize, which is bad.
I’m truly hoping for the best as an aspiring wrestler I want these females to impress! I hope the mass of wrestling fans can look beyond the fact that there lasses, ladies, and give them the chance to showcase their talent. If the WWE doesn’t condensed their move sets too much I believe it will be an impressive season.
Anything with AJ Lee must be good :) I will definitely be checking this out.
On a side note who else are the WWE officials supposed to be angry at apart from Tiffany and Serena? *insert extremely nosey emotion here*
I’m incredibly optimistic about D-NXT. Although, I must say, why defunct one of the lady’s titles if you’re about to call women up. The winner immediately jumps into the title hunt, pushing others back. So…..? I’m just curious.
That’s kinda scary that WWE is weeding out some “unwholesome” divas.
I feel like Maryse is a little bit in jeopardy because of that.
I seem to recall a few tweets of hers regarding losing her top while partying in Vegas. lol.
No wonder Eve gets such a big push. She’s like a ‘wholesome’ mascot.
“On a side note who else are the WWE officials supposed to be angry at apart from Tiffany and Serena? *insert extremely nosey emotion here*”
Layla was recently yelled at by management over this stupid war with tbp that somehow got their attention
Well there goes her chances at night of champions *smh*
Lame duck show? Wow people are so ignorant. Can’t they just give it a chance and stop being so judgemental. Just because there divas doesnt make them awful. We have AJ, Naomi and Aloisia who will bring the first episode’s ratings. Let’s just hope on the first episode we get a nice diva match so people will know not all rookie diva’s are bad. Well im a diva fan but i didnt watch this season of NXT nor the first one i will be sure to watch season 3. Hopefully more divas fans watch it as well.
im loving this season its got aj lee and noami knight and Alosia so it will be hard to see which get eliminated also i feel that because Alosia being with vickie will that get rid of her sooner meaning that vickie brings great heat and fans tend not to like her so will they vote her out because of that or will other fans vote for her wrestling skills so lets see
Replacements?
Well I guess I read something righ about being “too much drama.”
The only channels I think they could put on NXT is WGN America or Bravo TV and who wouldn’t want to see NXT and Real Housewives on the same night!
I think most people who aren’t wrestling fans would tune in because it’s female wrestling and it’s “different”, I don’t see the numbers sticking though.
I really hope the show does really well and WWE makes an all Divas show, but that’s unlikely. :P
I like your optimism Melanie. I’m with you, people are stupid to say its doomed. It hasn’t aired yet lol. I’m going to keep a positive stance on it. Sometimes we’re too quick to judge. LayCool/Kaval being a perfect example. It worked just fine and he won to top it off. Goldust, Primo, and Vickie are going to keep it funny and entertaining too. Its going to be a great show imo. I can’t wait!!
i wasn’t around for the diva search (lucky me?) but i’m still amazed at how well the knockouts did, especially as it wa on new year’s. if that’s possible, then surely the divas can captivate an audience, too.
i just hope that people go into watching it with an open mind, rather than watching it just to see somebody potentially mess up.
@LVEFan: ‘Lame duck show’ isn’t an insult. It’s a political term, here being used to refer to the fact that the season finale will be the final showed aired on SyFy, and the future of the show will obviously be up in air at that point.
“•an elected official still in office but not slated to continue”
‘Lame duck’ being the political term obv, rather than ‘lame duck show’.
Anyway, I’d like that to be the case, but if people like Jericho (while he was champ nonetheless) weren’t able to change the ratings then I doubt it’ll be the case this season. I do have faith that ratings will remain pretty much the same though, rather than dropping, which is what some people are predicting.
Let’s just give this show with all Divas on it,the love,the compassionate that they ladies are going to give and the support especially in the recent months on how the Divas were being let go from the company,if the ratings goes to the roof or the sky than the men’s,then hopefully the WWE can be like Wrestlicious or like Shimmer or like WSU to finally give the women their show.Before an all women show can happen that no more Divas can’t be release from their contacts and Senior Vice Presdient of Talent Relations my tush,that he must be fired from that job and WWE,if he wants women to look like that they need to pose for Playboy,then have your own PWF(Playboy Wrestling Federation) or PWE(Playboy Wrestling Entertainment),cause WWE is World Wrestling Entertainment.
i just hope no girls botch or get injured & impress fans enough to show that future divas can wrestle & put hard work in…
am i the only one that doesnt want the divas to have their own show i think that that would be a cop out by WWE they need to carve out a place on the main shows for the divas as opposed to sending them away to a show that they are bound to see as inferior
plus i love to see the divas and superstars have interactions something that wont happen if the divas are relegated to a show by them selves i think WWE just needs to put more effort into the divas on the shows that they are on currently
It’s about time WWE is looking for replacements.
More than half of the women on their roster are useless. Maybe with this NXT thing, when these women get on the roster, it will give them actual purpose to be there and could develop storylines/feuds that mean something instead of the same boring nonsensical matches that take place week after week.
Now I’m concerned… are certain NXT divas meant to be replacements for their current Raw or SD! diva counterparts?
It would of gotten better ratings if the pro’s were much better characters. Example :: The Miz, John Morrison, Lay-cool, Gail, Jillian and Evan B.
Vickie?Goldust?Primo?Kelly?Bellas?..Alicia?
What is WWE thinking?! That’s horrible.
I hope all the women on NXT go to Smackdown!
I think if WWE makes GOOD decisions with NXT 3, These Divas could put on a great show.
I mean Naomi Night or AJ Lee VS Aloisia are amazing match ups… WWE’s version of Gail Kim VS Awesome Kong (even though they have Gail…)
Even AJ Lee VS Naomi Night- we’ve seen this on FCW but it would be a lot better than any matches we’ve seen on RAW / SD
Does this mean wherever their pros are thats where the rookies go?
AJ, Aksana, Maxine & Jamie on RAW w/ pros and Naomi and Aloisia on SmackDown?
I’d love to see Maxine try to out golddig Maryse while on Raw.
congrats girls and go aj
I Like All The Rookies On NXT 3 And I Hope They All Go To Monday Night Raw Cause Smackdown Sucks. They Need To Trade Rey , matt Hardy , Kofi Kingston, and Drew To Raw.
or maybe they need to send them to smackdown as there are no divas there and smackdown only sucks because they arent gonna move any worthy talent there until they move to syfy in october wich is exactly when the divas NXT ends i wouldnt be suprised to see at least 4 of them to go to smackdown
I wonder who the “naughty” divas were.
I am wondering who most of the wrestling fans are and their prediction that an all women’s cast is doomed to fail. They obviously don’t follow women’s wrestling @SHIMMERwrestling and other independent circuits. Let’s check out the ratings.
i wonder if the superstar fans will actually buy tickets to NXT season 3.
I thought it was taped with Smackdown? Right before? Or right before RAW? How does it work?
@041293–Aside from Serena and Tiffany?
I’m thinking that the “naughty” divas weren’t Laycool, Vickie, or Eve. Since Melina and Maryse live in Los Angeles, I doubt they would really feel the need to act a fool, since they could be doing it all the time. Gail, Jillian, and Natalya don’t seem to be the types to get crazy (especially Nattie and Gail). Plus Natalya would probably be out with either her boyfriend Tyson or with her cousin… I’m sure they’d cover for her if she did get out of hand, as JoMo and Miz would for Mel and Ryse (are Miz and Maryse still together?).
I get the feeling that it was currently face divas that went crazy in LA, since they are usually used in the wholesome image thing.
Kelly is a possible “naughty” girl as she is young and there are pictures of her doing unsavory things out there online. Alicia’s pretty young too, but I get the vibe that with her it would depend on who she’s out with. The Bellas too, if they went out and didn’t have someone older or more conscientious, they might get a little carried away.
So I’m thinking K2, at least one of the Bellas, Tiffany, Serena and maybe Alicia (someone on Rajah.com mentioned that Alicia got buried in her Summerslam match… maybe she did something once they got back from China?) got into trouble.
But I really would bet that most of what the ladies did was typical stuff for ladies their age (early to mid 20s). If they had done something worse, they surely would have fired them like they did Serena. WWE is probably just trying to scare some of them by showing that they have replacements on tap. AJ was probably getting brought up anyways (and Naomi was probably getting a call-up soon too, especially if the roster is getting cut soon).
I still want them to change Aloisia’s name. It sounds like a skin disease. Give her a name like, I don’t know, Sheena or Shiva/Sheeva or something.
@TommyStarstruck – Not definitely, but yeah it’s possible that that COULD be the possibility. Obviously, now that there is only one title, the winner of this will probably go wherever the champ is at. (Ie. if Aloisia wins and Layla/Michelle wins the title, she’ll go to SD) For the others, I think they might go to wherever their pro is at just to work with them more if WWE doesn’t have anything else to do with them. I think for sure Aloisia will go to SD with Vickie whether she wins, or not. I can already see Vickie parading Aloisia around like a school project and “showing her off” to the other Divas, possibly she might be her new LayCool in a way and insert her into all the title pictures.
I can see Aksana, and possibly Naomi or Jamie going to RAW. Jamie isn’t going to do anything besides go back to Interviewing and probably wrestle a few times here and there like Maria did when she first started. AJ might go to Raw, or she might go to SD because they need more faces and she can wrestle. Liviana, is like Jamie — doesn’t really matter where she goes, she’s mostly going to be used for her character rather than wrestling so she sounds like a Raw girl to me, lol. Yep. So, I’m thinking.
Raw – Aksana, Liviana, Jamie
SD – Aloisia, AJ, Naomi
But I can’t wait until the day ALL these girls are on the same brand so we can see, Aksana vs Alosia, Naomi vs AJ, Naomi vs Alosia, Alosia vs AJ, AJ vs Aksana, etc. All of these matches sound better than anything we’ve seen on Raw since Mickie vs Beth vs Melina days, IMO.
I’m really looking forward to an all Divas NXT. I’m not happy with of the choices for Pro from storyline stand point. Personally, I would replace Kelly with Melina or Gail Kim. Then I would replace the Bella twins with Natalya or Jillian. Finally, I would replace Primo with Zack Ryder. Season 2, I was against Laycool being Pros to Kaval storyline wise but the interaction between Laycool & Kaval was very entertaining. I think Ryder would be entertaining as they could have him hitting on all of the Rookies.
Now far as WWE management unhappy with the majority of the current Divas on the roster, well I think they are being somewhat unfair. Here’s my reason why I feel this way. One, there’s some sites that said that WWE was unhappy with Tiffany for also being at a Playboy Mansion party in addition to being arrested the weekend before Summerslam. I think that it is unfair for the WWE to get upset that Tiffany was at a Playboy party as Tiffany had posed for Playboy before she was hired by the WWE. Since I mention Tiffany posing nude, Maryse has also posed nude for playboy. Also Gail Kim posed topless in a photo shoot before the WWE rehire her. I find it hard to believe that nobody in WWE management didn’t know this information about their past before hiring Tiffany, Maryse and Gail. My second point is that WWE makes the big deal that they want to project a wholesome image now that WWE is TVPG and their main focus is on families. That’s great but then the WWE has or allows them to wear skimpy outfits on TV. Prime example of this is the outfits that Laycool wore through most of NXT Season 2. Internet reports were that two weeks ago Michelle McCool had a wardrobe malfunction and one of her breast popped out of her dress. I’m not saying that Michelle mend for it happen but fortunately for the WWE it was a tape show so they were able to edit it out.
I’m not saying that all the Divas on the current roster are saints but the WWE can’t have it both ways. But important thing is that maybe the WWE is going to try bring the Divas division to the level it once was. This all Divas season of NXT to me is a great start.
I don’t like speculation’s but the WWE problems with the girls in the week of Summerslam, might just be with them breaking kayfabe.
For instance, Gail and Alicia posed together, when Alicia was still a “I’m superior than the others” type of heel.
Maryse posed with the Miz instead of appearing with Ted Dibiase.
Then Maryse also posed with Gail and Rosa.
I know it seems stupid, but we all know they don’t like for people to get caught breaking kayfabe like this.
But they could also go out and party to much. Most of them seem like party girls to me.
@Ana_Nattie_rules
I think that you’re right about WWE management being unhappy with them breaking kayface. I still don’t why WWE management makes a big deal out of this issue. Come on, it’s the 21st Century; we know it’s scripted. The whole kayface is real concept worked back in the 80′s because the internet wasn’t around for the public. Now, we know what’s going in minutes of something wrestling wise is happening. Vince is mentally insane to think the majority of people believe that the kayface storylines are real. Sorry, I forgot that Vince McMahon is already insane. Anyway excellent points Ana_Nattie_rules, you truly know your women’s wrestling in my opinion.
I swear, if Vince is pissed off because they took pictures “out of character” I think I will scream. Were they at like Fan Axxess or whatever because if that’s the case I could understand (granted Maryse and Ted are usually in together now at stuff like signings). But if they were “off duty” and WWE is pissed that’s just dumb. I could sorta understand the issue with Serena as her gimmick is a rather severe one.
But I wouldn’t classify them breaking kayfabe via pictures to be “drama” on par with getting arrested.
But I still just think that not all the NXT divas are getting on the show (at least as wrestlers) and that they is a big roster cut looming in the near future for our divas.
“(someone on Rajah.com mentioned that Alicia got buried in her Summerslam match… maybe she did something once they got back from China?)”
The show in China happened a week after SummerSlam, so if Alicia did something bad in China, they couldn’t have punished her for it at SummerSlam.
Whatever happened with the other Divas that this reports mentioned, it couldn’t have been too bad because only Tiffany and Serena were punished, and with Tiffany, and WWE is hopeful of bring her back as soon as possible. If someone else had made a scene in public or whatever, why not suspend/fire her, too? The fact that no one else seems to have been punished tells me that WWE was mildly annoyed at worst about whatever happened.
@ daemonicwanderer317 – Eve lives in Los Angeles and besides she would be one of the last divas to act like that. You know theres a good reason why they always pick her to do promotional work for the company. And Vickie? lmao shes a mother! was with her. I doubt there was anyone else acting all crazy tbh.
lol Forget what I just said I read your post wrong. Sorry