Check your local weather forecast for flying pigs, folks! We’ve seen the occasional ‘two Divas matches in one night’ on SmackDown, more common we see two Knockouts matches on any given episode of Impact but Raw? Raw?! Following last week’s Vince birthday debacle, this week it was the Divas Champion’s birthday. I wonder what she wished for… Better yet, neither match was a three minute wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am affair either! Cloudy with a chance of Divas.
First up was a six Diva battle royal to determine who faced the birthday girl, Mickie James, l ater on in the night. Rather than the standard clusterf*ck we usually see, they did a good job of getting the dead weight out of the ring early and letting the ‘wrestler girls’ do what they do best.
First, the entrance — so the Divas finally get their own entrances for one of these battle royals and Gail Kim decides: “Oh no, not me… I want to be ~suppressed~ by this turgid Diva lifestyle. I have been taken away from my beloved Knockouts and have to work here just for the money. But I shan’t enjoy it! Woe is me.” So what does a girl do? She hijacks Kelly Kelly‘s entrance. It definitely looked like a miscue to me, I guess she accidentally walked out and realised she made a mistake because Kelly didn’t even see her behind her, Gail had to tap her on the shoulder. And you’ll even notice a pause from announcer, Lilian Garcia, possibly because she was surprised to see Gail come out with Kelly. “Introducing first…” Pause. “Kelly Kelly and Gail Kim.” Also interesting to note that Beth Phoenix, arguably the top heel on Raw came out second while Alicia Fox came out last. The last spot is usually reserved for the top Divas/Superstars. Maybe Gail was supposed to come out after Alicia?
Anyway that over with, let’s skip to the match: We kick off with three different matches going on at once, Beth-Kelly, Gail-Rosa, Alicia-Jillian. Kind of hard to keep track of all of this. I noticed Rosa attempting to hit some awful looking slaps Gail’s way, before being pushed into the Glamazon. Despite being her former protege, Beth is having none of that — and Rosa & her weave go flying over the top rope. After this, we see some work between Gail and Beth which is always an enticing prospect, while Kelly hits a few forearms to Jillian and Alicia. Ms Fierce kicks Kelly in the stomach and delivers a really nice ace kick, delivered much better than the one on Mickie last week. Unfortunately our girl Foxy isn’t long for this match as she’s next eliminated by Gail Kim. She’s followed by Kelly, who’s dropped out of the ring by Beth who picks her up almost as if she’s cradling a baby. In the ring, Gail and Jillian ‘hit it off’, you could say, with Jillian launching Gail into the turnbuckle, Gail moves out of the way and Jillian eats ring post. Beth attacks next, but Gail manages to fight back and has Beth against the ropes, she falls out of the ring but manages to hold on thankfully for her. Beth teeters off the apron, I like this, it reminds me of those Royal Rumble matches when people are trying to eliminate the Big Show for example and the ‘big man’ kinda teases he’s about to fall. I guess Beth is our Diva equivalent of that.
Now it’s time for what I felt was some good work between Gail Kim and veteran, Jillian. They do a little exchange, which Gail gets the best of, tossing Jillian out of the ring but again — she hangs on this time. Gail tries to finish the job, but gets tossed out herself by Jillian before sliding back in through Jilly’s legs and almost going for a rollup, err… Anyway then she misses another crossbody but good news folks! She doesn’t knock herself loopy this time. Risky move going for it in the first place though, Gail. Jillian goes for a handspring elbow but meets Gail’s knees, Jillian stumbles to the canvas and crawls around like a retarded cat. Jillian grabs hold of Gail trying to throw her over the top rope, but Gail fights back, leading into a really awkward, awful looking hurricanrana that turned into a butt bump. I don’t even…
Did Michael Cole really just call Gail ‘dead weight’? Jillian tosses Gail over the top but in HBK-esque fashion, Gail skins the cat as they say [I don’t know why]. Another amazing observation from the amazing Michael Cole: “Jillian surprised that Gail’s still alive.” That is just… wow. Gail uses her legs to hit a legscissors on Jillian who falls out of the ring… finally! Unfortunately for Gail, Beth is still in this thing and with a stiff kick, eliminates Gail and takes the win!
Good battle royal, I felt. I enjoyed the work between Jillian and Gail minus a few glaring awkward moments.
This leads to…
