We can all agree that, with a few exceptions, Divas get the short end of the stick when comes to entrance themes. While the male superstars get music from actual bands and artists or custom made songs with lyrics, Divas get stuck with crappy production music. If I had the chance I would change all the Divas music to something a little… well, better. Hence, Diva B-Sides was born; a Diva Dirt exclusive where we match WWE Divas and TNA Knockouts with new entrance themes. This week I’m getting a little help from the one and only, Melanie. I also have a bonus B-Side for everyone’s favorite *cough* Diva. So let’s kick things off with today’s B-Side for TNA Knockout, Vict… er, I mean Tara.
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 STEVEN’S PICK: “MOVING TO SEATTLE”  BY THE MATERIAL
Let me start of by saying, even though TNA’s stock music is the bane of my existence (see Jenna Morasca’s music), they’ve done a pretty good job with Tara’s music. It fits way better than her WWE music ever did.
That said, if I had to pick a new song for Tara, this would be the perfect choice. Like her current theme, ‘Broken’, “Moving To Seattle” starts of slow and dives head first into a guitar intro. It has that rock and roll feel that I always thought suited her more than her hip-hop-esque WWE entrance theme. It even has female vocals, which seem to be present in all of her entrance theme since her debut.Â
[audio:02 Moving to Seattle.mp3]
MELANIE’S PICK: “UNTOUCHED” BY THE VERONICAS
 The chords in the intro of this song are reminiscent of “All The Things She Said”, Tara’s first ever theme. Because of the softer verses, this song would probably need a good edit before it’s entrance theme worthy. Maybe have the intro go right into the chorus?
We’re kickin’ it old school this week! For one week only, Melanie’s back, kids! Erin is off on her holidays this week but will return to the SmackDown Redux next week. Let’s hope I haven’t lost my touch…
This week’s SmackDown saw the final push into Night of Champions this Sunday, as Melina vs Michelle McCool was the final match announced for the card. For storyline purposes we have Melina ‘invoking’ her rematch clause for the Women’s Championship. Check out their segment below:
‘Monotone McCool’ is back this week — that’s what happens when you get rid of an amazing could-be mouthpiece. Yes, the scripting was kind of standard but I enjoyed the jibes: calling the make-up artist ‘historic’, forgetting Trish’s name. It could have come across well, but Monotone McCool strikes again. There’s no inflection in Michelle’s speech, there’s no emphasis on the words, I wouldn’t be surprised if Michelle flunked Drama in high school. It probably makes matters worse that I watched this segment after watching a promo by the Beautiful People on last night’s Impact. I watched this and in my head, I pictured how Velvet Sky would say it and how she’d hit the mark and have the right tone. Promos aren’t Michelle’s strongest suit granted, but the execution came off extremely flat & the truth is, this was one of the better scripted promos she’s received from the writers.
Melina on the other hand has always had great promo skills and we saw that here, I would say that Melina is the closest to Trish Stratus who was a master of the delivering humorous promos and interviews [click here for an example]. Melina’s promo called for humour, “Congratulate you… on being the biggest phony in WWE history,” and she pulled it off well. As a heel, Melina’s promos were awesome but as a face, it needs to be toned down so it doesn’t come off as bitchy and I think she found the right balance here. Melina’s the complete opposite of Michelle, she had the perfect inflection in her voice: “You know what that means.” My only advice to her would be to dial it up a little more on the humour a la Trish, using her hands and her face to match to kind of sell that comedy.
So on Raw we had the hairspray and on SmackDown we have the foundation, anyone sensing a pattern? The little punch line “I also tone hair,” was cute. Michelle walking away didn’t really work for me, isn’t she supposed to be aggressive and no-nonsense? Wouldn’t she turn right around and left-hook Melina? It was okay but I thought it was unrealistic for Michelle to walk away.
Anyway that sets up their match for Night of Champions, a match that hasn’t really been pushed until now which sucks. There was a lot they could have explored between The Bash and this PPV. But Melina has been set up as a strong contender and a ‘thorn in Michelle’s side’.
This week on Impact, the entire active Knockout roster competed in a battle royal for the prize of $50,000 and a chance to be part of the Main Event Mafia. Why the need of a referee for a battle royal, I’m not sure, but a recurrent Traci Brooks fills that quota.
At the first sound of the bell, the most glaring thing is that there is so much going on. I even had flashbacks of the Miss WrestleMania match with the absurdity and lack of entrances. Daffney gets eliminated first, and Awesome Kong tosses Madison Rayne out onto Daffney. In a bit of an overeaction, referee Slick Johnson cradles Madison and calls for help, shadows of their “interaction” last week.
The Beautiful People, Angelina Love and Velvet Sky throw ODB over the top rope, but Cody Deaner breaks her fall. Shady Slick Johnson takes heed of this and sends him to the back. Sojourner Bolt is eliminated by Taylor Wilde, next. Velvet Sky makes an unsuccessful attempt at Victoria, who eliminates her with a kick to the face. Kevin Nash is spotted making his way to commentary as TNA cuts to commercial.
If you’ll recall, last year we made a single [pathetic, I know!] post on women’s MMA, which you can check out by clicking here. While MMA has already taken over pro wrestling as a lucrative pay per view property, women’s MMA is becoming a hot thing too — just ask our beloved Victoria, who’s training … Read more
This week’s Diva Dirt Roundtable is brought to you in association with SHIMMER Volume 23, on DVD soon! Click the above banner to purchase SHIMMER DVDs, Volumes 1-22.
On this week’s Roundtable, we also discuss what you can find on the new DVD including SHIMMER Champion, MsChif defending the title against newly signed WWE Diva, Serena Deeb. Plus SHIMMER founder, Dave Prazak’s thoughts on the volume as well as your chance to win a copy!
And with all that, we still have time for our usual coverage! This week’s WWE topic centers around this Sunday’s Night of Champions PPV, we analyse which feud is best — Michelle-Melina or Maryse-Mickie? Meanwhile in our TNA topic, we discuss if Victoria was screwed out of the Knockouts Championship at Victory Road. We also discuss our thoughts on the past week in TV and as always, your comments & questions!
To listen to the Roundtable directly on the website, just click on the play button below. However due to the length of the Roundtable discussion, we also have a download link available for those who want to listen to the MP3 file on their computer.
Note: Contains spoilers on future WWE/TNA shows.
[audio:roundtable23july09.mp3] Run Time: 47:14
[Download | File size: 43.24mb]
Please Note: The ‘Diva Dirt Roundtable’ is the exclusive content of Diva Dirt (diva-dirt.com), for which we hold copyright. By downloading our audio you agree not to repost or transcribe the content elsewhere including but not limited to other websites, blogs or message boards. Failure to respect copyright will result in legal action.
Find out how you can win a copy of SHIMMER Vol. 23 after the cut:
You can never have too much of your favourite Divas and especially when one of them happens to be the legendary Trish Stratus! Trish was a guest on The Surf in Canada last week, swapping stories, answering questions and teaching host Jason Agnew yoga and let’s just say, it gets a tad creepy! The episode is now available online and is a real score for any Trish fan — 40 interrupted minutes of the former 7 time Women’s Champion:
As we all know, Trish was not just a great performer but she had so much personality too and that is fully on show in this really humorous interview. No one can do it like Trish! Sporting a new more conservative look, Trish is seen in a dress jacket with the sleeves rolled up, looking really classy. You can also tell that the rumours from last year are true, it looks as though Trish did have breast reduction surgery. Either way, she’s looking mighty fine — though her age is beginning to show in her face. But that’s not a bad thing.
Among topics discussed that are of interest to you guys, Trish talks about some of the Divas today using her signature moves like the ‘Ma-Trish’ and the finger-pointing entrance. She also talks about her personal favourite storyline and much, much more. It’s just a really fun show!
Spoilers from the third & final night of the Impact tapings. These matches will air in the month of August before Hard Justice on August 16th: *4way Knockouts Match: Angelina Love vs. Tara vs. ODB vs. Awesome Kong. Tara rolled up Kong for the win. *Christy Hemme returned and defeated SoJo Bolt with the FFG. … Read more
In what could be major news, though unconfirmed at this time, we have heard some rumblings about TNA producing a separate Knockouts series. PWInsider is now reporting that there’s some “interesting Knockouts news in the weeks to come.” So I guess one could do some addition there. The only thing I have heard so far … Read more
The final match for Night of Champions this Sunday was made official at last night’s SmackDown taping. Women’s Champion, Michelle McCool will defend against Melina in a rematch from The Bash. The match, to me, is a thing of new in today’s women’s division where Divas can rarely get on the PPV cards let alone … Read more
Christy Hemme is set to return to TV at the Impact tapings either tonight or tomorrow night, reports PWInsider. Hemme has been out of action since January, when she injured her neck during a training session. Fellow Knockout, Traci Brooks made her return at last night’s taping to air this Thursday. Meanwhile, Japanese star Ayako … Read more
WWE executive producer, Kevin Dunn has reportedly proposed an idea of doing an American Idol-like search to replace Raw ring announcer, Lilian Garcia who has announced her departure for later this year. I’m not completely opposed to the idea, I mean it adds some importance to Lilian’s position which is oft overlooked and it would … Read more
Despite tacking on yet another gimmick to the Divas match, Raw managed to pull off a decent match which was dubbed a “Legs Match” with Kelly Kelly, Gail Kim, Alicia Fox & Rosa Mendes wrestling in shorts. Following in the footsteps of last week’s SmackDown, the red brand gave the ‘second string players’ a chance to shine a la Layla, Eve and Natalya on Friday. However unlike SmackDown, Raw also managed to push it’s Night of Champions match in addition to the second string quartet.
Earlier in the evening however, we saw an interesting dynamic in the ‘feud’ between Maryse and Mickie James, when Maryse sprayed a can of what we’re to assume is hairspray in Mickie’s eyes. This feud has never really been dialled up in the past two months that it’s been going on, we just seem to have Maryse avoiding Mickie because ‘she’s scared’ — which to me is just WWE’s excuse for lazy booking, they can’t come up with anything original or exciting. However in the final two weeks before their big pay per view match, we finally see the pace picked up as last week, Maryse pinned Mickie in the ‘Swimsuit Spectacular’ and this week she sprays Mickie in the eyes. What this tells us is that the writers are happy to bore us with teases of Maryse being scared of Mickie for two months and then when as we approach the PPV, go for the hard sell. To me, it’s a case of too little too late and while I’m sure they’ll have a great match on PPV, I’m not as excited as I should be. I don’t feel the personal animosity between them like I should do. Doing a hard sell the Monday before the PPV just comes off as desperate and is extremely transparent.
That said, I enjoyed this segment. It’s funny that WWE’s writers are actually in tune with the fans, as we saw in Mickie’s scripting last night — but yet they still go completely the other way from what we want to see. They had Mickie bring up the fact that Maryse beat her in a ‘Summer Swimsuit Spectacular’, sharing the same distaste for that type of match as the viewers and alluding to the fact that Maryse is an inferior worker which we know to be true. They mock it through Mickie here, yet they continue to book it. Things went downhill from there though, with nursery school rhyming — whichever writer came up with ‘Trampions’ deserves a gold star *Eye roll* Out comes The Miz, Maryse’s rumoured real life boyfriend [hence Vince’s pervy booking] berating Mickie. I know he’s playing a character, but I can’t help but sense that Miz truly does believe what he’s saying. I get the feeling that he and Maryse as a couple would be more narcissistic than Speidi. I liked Mickie’s comeback though, about getting his material off the Internet — coz it’s true! Out comes Maryse in a gorgeous pair of sandals and sprays Mickie in the eyes and does what she does best: flips her hair, smirks and waves her arms around. I heart her mannerisms.
Spoilers for this week’s show are below. Highlight to read. The show airs Thursday at 9pm on Spike TV:
*TNA Knockouts Battle Royal – The Winner receives $50,000 & a spot in the Main Event Mafia Referee: Traci Brooks Participants: ODB, Alyssa Flash, SoJo Bolt, Daffney, Taylor Wilde, Sarita, Awesome Kong, Velvet Sky, Madison Rayne, Angelina Love and Tara..it came down to Kong & Tara ..they were both close to eliminating one another, when Traci Brooks flipped them over the rope to win and began to celebrate. Nash introduced her as the winner and she jumped into his arms. [Source: PWInsider]
This year’s installment of Victory Road pitted Angelina Love against the Knockouts Champion, Victoria as well as Sharmell vs. Jenna Morasca.
First up is the Knockout’s title match. With the women’s title match being this early on card, don’t know whether to be grateful or plead for mercy.
As the Beautiful People make their beautiful way to the ring, I’m pleased to see Madison Rayne actually doing something in their entrance, even if it’s just shaking her ass. It’s even refreshing to see Angelina out of beekeeper’s suit, even if her pants look like they have gotten into losing battle with a shredder. Oh, and Velvet Sky prances around in lingerie. What else is new? Anyway, I won’t make any mention of Madison’s lean against the ring ropes as doing her best thinking on her back… because that would be inappropriate.
Victoria enters the Impact Zone with Poison by her side and the title held high above her head. At very sound of the bell, Velvet attempts to taunt and distract Victoria. Unperturbed, Victoria takes Angelina Love down and slams her a couple times. This is too much to handle for Angelina who calls for a time-out. Before the challenger can even catch her breath, Victoria pulls her back into the ring. Victoria then proceeds to support Angelina’s weight on her own back while pulling on her hair before slamming her down onto the canvas. Following up with an irish whip to the corner, Love counters but falls into a tarantula manuever against the ropes.
Victoria breaks the hold and gets involved with the Beautiful People, only providing Angelina with the opporunity to score a baseball slide. Just like that, the fight is taken to outside. There are shadows of their last match when Angelina shoves Victoria into the ring apron. Back into the ring, Angelina performs a running dropkick. She then runs Victoria into corner repeatedly. Tossing Victoria down from the turnbuckle, Angelina even finds time to gloat about it.
However, Victoria fights back and whips Angelina Love into the corner. Angelina follows up with kicks to the side of Victoria’s head and a diving clothesline. She goes for the pin multiple times, but is unsuccessful. With similar offense in mind, each Knockout takes her opponent down with a clothesline. Referee Slick Johnson administers a 10-count. Victoria surprisingly musters enough energy to kip-up and soon lead Angelina into a flapjack. A standing moonsault on behalf of Victoria renders a 2-count.
Velvet Sky takes to the ring apron. When the Beautiful People attempt to set Victoria up, Velvet accidently sprays hairpray in Angelina’s eyes. The referee gets so distracted and preoccupied with Velvet and Madison that he abandons what would otherwise be a 3-count against Angelina.
Victoria hits a spinning sidewalk slam and makes her way to the corner, stepping on Angelina Love in the process. She misses a moonsault from the top rope. Taking advantage of this, Angelina goes for the pin. Referee Slick Johnson does not see Victoria’s foot on the bottom rope and crowns Angelina Love the new Knockout’s champion.
A disgruntled Victoria superkicks the referee and even fits in a widow’s peak on the new champion. Angelina is pulled to safety, leaving only the referee to suffer Poison’s wrath. In a backstage segment, Madison Rayne is seen exiting a shower stall just after referee Slick Johnson. It is apparent that some form “persuastion” was utilized to guarantee Angelina’s win. So, forget my last comment about Madison on her back. She can do it standing up, as well.
Honestly, the outcome of this match took me for a spin. The Beautiful People were right by calling Victoria’s win as a fluke, sadly. I don’t want to jump to conclusions and say that Victoria’s title reign was entirely pointless, seeing as I have no idea what TNA may have in store for this feud. I will say though… that it doesn’t make any damn sense. It is only sensible that if TNA was looking to further pursue this feud, they should have either held off in having Victoria win the title on Impact or should have waited to allow Angelina to win the title back. Even perhaps at the next PPV? Sure, feuds are all about exciting twists and turns of events, but I can’t help but feel a tad misled in that aspect. It’s obvious that TNA tried to pull a fast one on us and TNA succeeded. Perhaps, not to its own benefit. Does anyone truly see the point of having Victoria blow all of her momentum? Somewhere, the WWE higher-ups are laughing.
Watch the match below:
You thought that was bad? Commence with the utter failure after the cut:
So you guys may have noticed that we had to cancel last week’s Roundtable, we ran into a number of issues that forced us to postpone. However, the Roundtable returns this Thursday night with our biggest show yet! This week’s Roundtable is sponsored by SHIMMER Volume 23, which will be available on DVD this month! … Read more
You’re forgiven if you thought ‘Original Flavour’ TNA Knockout, Traci Brooks had been fired or left TNA — but no, she hasn’t. In fact, Traci is set to return to TV at this week’s Impact tapings, which take place tomorrow, Wednesday and Thusday where the company will tape another month’s worth of episodes. Traci was … Read more
In the opening contest of Victory Road, Angelina Love shockingly regained the Knockouts Championship in what I can only describe as WWE-esque ‘shock value’ booking. Angelina pinned Victoria, after Victoria missed a beautiful moonsault from the top turnbuckle — however Victoria’s foot was on the bottom rope. Post-match, Victoria superkicked referee, Slick Johnson and hit … Read more
Tonight’s Victory Road pay per view sees Main Event Mafia ladies, Jenna Morasca and Sharmell go one-on-one [or will they?] meanwhile Knockouts Champion, Victoria defends the gold against Angelina Love.
Our Diva Dirt writers weigh in:
Jenna Morasca vs Sharmell
Erin: They seem to be resting pretty heavily on Jenna’s Survivor “fame”, so I’m pretty sure TNA’s going to put her over. Jenna will win, and TNA will milk whatever press they can out of a Survivor winner/Playboy covergirl winning her first wrestling match. Sharmell probably has more fire coming in, and personally I’d prefer her to win and have Jenna vanish completely, but it’s far too logical for Jenna to win. TNA would profit off of her victory, and that’s the route they’re obviously going to take.
Melanie: This is a real waste of a pay per view spot, but I have to admit the highlights on Thursday’s Impact was quite entertaining. Even so, I’m still not interested in this match. I think it’s going to be Jenna, just because she’s a ~celebrity~ Load of crap, if you ask me…
Steven: To make a prediction for this match, would mean acknowledging this as a real match. Which I don’t. But if I had to choose, I would go with Jenna. She has Awesome Kong in her corner for christ sakes! While I do predict that Sharmell will be the loser in this exchange, the real loser is the TNA audience.
Tiffany: If the match between Sojo and Kong is any indication, Jenna has the advantage here with Kong in her corner. I believe that Sharmell can hold her own in the ring. However, if it comes down to the two accessories to match, I can see Jenna picking this one up, as much as it pains me.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of your ‘five a day’, but Diva Dirt is here to provide you with your ‘five a week’ in our Weekly 5. Join us every Sunday as we take a look back at the week gone by and highlight our top 5 moments of the week.
DON “JERRY SPRINGER” WEST ACTS A DAMN FOOL…
Every company, it seems has that one announcer you can’t stand and want to punch in the face. For TNA, that’s Don West. So why, TNA, would you torture us even more by giving him a Jerry Springer-esque segment in which he hosted Sharmell and Jenna Morasca [plus their trainers] ahead of tonight’s Victory Road pay per view? Jerry Springer, you ain’t. Mr West’s ass-kissing of Sharmell tried to come across like The King circa-1999, but fell flat. Adding to the Jerry Springer vibe was the war of words amongst our Knockouts, something tells me Sojo Bolt in particular would fit right in on an episode of Jerry…
For years, I’ve been hearing about how it’s a no-no for lower-card wrestlers to score a date with a Diva and for years, I’ve never really, whole-heartedly believed it. Surely, a publicly funded company wouldn’t be so sexist? Surely they couldn’t be so disgusting and vulgar? They can and they are. Former Diva Torrie Wilson‘s … Read more
In the Saturday Supplement, the Diva Dirt team will aim to discuss a news story, a televised event or other relevant and current topics. The objective, like the average weekend newspaper, is to offer more indepth and lengthy discussion.
After this week’s edition of TNA Impact, the name Alissa Flashis surely on everyone’s lips. Alissa opened eyes and got the fans on their feet in her TNA debut. An event years in the making, it made me cast my mind back to the first time I laid eyes on this surly competitor.
I’ll be the first to admit that four years ago Cheerleader Melissa, real name Melissa Anderson, was an absolute mystery to me. Raised off the glitz and glamour that is the WWE, I was completely oblivious to the independent circuit. I had no idea what kind of treasures were hidden in the small, virtually unknown promotions littering the country. However, all this changed when I laid eyes on what was soon to become the most watched DVD in my collection: SHIMMER Women Athletes Volume 1.
As I read the match listing, one name in particular caught my eye: Cheerleader Melissa. I immediately thought the worst of the situation. No doubt it was just another lame, cliche and mildly offensive gimmick that would serve no greater purpose than to give the crowd a rise. After years of being force-fed that kind of crap, the mere thought made my eyes roll. Oh, how wrong I was.
Former Diva Search winner, Eve Torres has mystified fans by adopting a unique spin on the moonsault as her finisher. When I first saw it, my jaw dropped and on the two occasions she’s busted it out, it’s been perfection! The exciting move came as a shock from such a Diva — I mean Eve’s not exactly known for her in-ring prowess. But it only takes only one move to wow fans and Eve is bound to turn heads & be taken a little more seriously with her fierce handspring moonsault.
Watch Eve’s finisher, which we’ve dubbed ‘Forbidden Fruit’ below:
So as an ode to Eve, we have collated some of the other Divas who’ve used the moonsault in their arsenal — well kinda. We didn’t get too far so we included some other moonsault-esque moves too!
# Saturday, Saturday # That can only mean one thing it’s time for the continuation of our favourite new webseries *cough* ‘Ask the Divas’. This week, The Bella Twins, Maria, Lilian Garcia and Tiffany dispense advice: Diva Dirt was shown a short preview clip of next week’s episode, featuring only Maria! Now we can’t repost … Read more
This week, we are treated to a TNA Knockout webmatch between the two accessories of the Sharmell vs. Jenna Morasca contest at Victory Road. Consequently, we also get a sneak peek of things to come toward the PPV. Awesome Kong (looking just fine without Raisha Saeed in her corner) unleashes some pent-up aggression against her … Read more
 STEVEN’S PICK: “MOVING TO SEATTLE”  BY THE MATERIAL
