Hello one and all! Welcome to a new column, ‘A Londoner’s Eye’ here at Diva Dirt piggybacking building off of the success of David’s wonderful column. I always get emails and questions about my opinion on this, that and the other and as you all know by now, I am highly opinionated on pretty much everything, so this new column will be a notebook of sorts which I hope to regularly update with my thoughts on what’s going on in the world of women’s wrestling. There likely won’t be any regaling tales from my childhood, though — I’ll leave that to David.

However, this first column does have some connection to our self-professed Mr Glamazon, as you can probably guess by the title. This one is all about a certain glamorous amazon, who like her name suggests, we are all eagerly awaiting to rise from the ashes in the coming days or weeks.

I admire Beth Phoenix for a number of reasons: her determination and passion for the industry, to me, shines through. She had a long journey to get to WWE and now she’s living her dream and seems like she doesn’t take it for granted one bit. Then there’s her striking physique. Furthermore Beth, in my opinion, fits perfectly into WWE’s PG era along with the likes of John Cena, because she’s a great role model regardless of whether she’s a babyface or heel.

As a babyface, she’s able to connect with her fans and be that role model a little more, but even as a heel Beth was always smart, savvy and headstrong — attributes that women and young girls can look up to. Beth has made her character come across elegant — even though she slams girls into the mat — and you’d never dream to hear the word ‘whore’ come out of this Diva’s mouth. No sir. Leave that to the Knockouts. Though we’d love to have seen Beth tussle with the likes of Trish, Lita, Victoria et al, somehow I’ve always felt she fits much better into this era than the last. Though the Divas then didn’t curse as much as the Knockouts, they were pretty sexually suggestive and explicit themselves. Beth Phoenix, the elegant, graceful, Parents Television Council-friendly Glamazon wouldn’t have worked quite as well as it does now.

Yet for all the praise I have heaped on Beth in that last paragraph, I haven’t always been so enamored with Beth.

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