courtesy : wwe.com
Well, some fans might argue that WWE's current golden girl Kelly has the edge: she's popular, gorgeous, enthusiastic about wrestling and, perhaps most importantly in WWE's jagged political environment, well-liked backstage (Randy Orton brought an avalanche of heat onto himself when he harshly and needlessly criticised aspects of her personal life in his now infamous interview with Arizona's Real Rock Radio Show). She also hasn't had the championship very long at all, having won the title on the June 20th edition of Monday Night Raw after a fan vote awarded her a WWE Divas Championship shot.
Conventional wisdom tells us WWE will want to give her some more time on top. But is it really that simple? I don't think so. Indeed, I fully believe former women's champion Beth can win the title off the former bikini model from Florida at the pay-per-view.
Here's why. First of all, while Kelly has taken great strides as an in-ring performer, there are still big question marks hanging over her in-ring ability. For example, her (mercifully short) match with Brie Bella at WWE's spectacular Money in the Bank pay-per-view was one of the few blights of an otherwise fantastic card. Botched moves, mistiming, a distinct lack of fan reaction... make no mistake about it: the match was a shambles.
Indeed, the match was so awful that, in a rather unprofessional move, the Bella Twins took to Twitter to snap back at critics of the match, even taking a few shots at the TNA Knockouts in the process. For her part, Kelly remained silent, but she could not have been ignorant to the criticism.
Beth, on the other hand, has always been one of WWE's better female performers. Learning her trade on the indies, including a stint in Allison Danger's Shimmer promotion, she's vastly superior to the current crop of divas who always try but never really deliver the goods in the ring. She has often been compared to Chyna in her run (the Glamazon character is almost certainly inspired by Chyna, and Beth, like her predecessor, also showed up in the Royal Rumble one year), but people tend to forget while making the comparison that Phoenix is actually a far more competent and smoother wrestler than Chyna ever was. She's a notch above most of the other performers in WWE as well, sans Nattie, perhaps.
Indeed, I personally thought her matches last year with Laycool, including an enjoyable Extreme Makeover match with McCool at the Extreme Rules PPV, were some of the best women's matches in WWE since 2002 when fine wrestlers like Molly Holly, Jazz, Victoria (now Tara in TNA) and Trish Stratus were dishing out great matches on a regular basis. Kelly has no such track record—her in-ring work is patchy at best. In a division that has matches often filled with botched moves and miscues, centering the division on a good in-ring general like Beth may appeal to WWE management. After all, Beth is far better at carrying clueless opponents than Kelly is and will likely work far better with the likes of Nikki and Brie Bella than Kelly has.
Similar to Kelly, Beth also has her vocal supporters backstage: in a July interview with GQ Magazine, current WWE star CM Punk singled out Beth for praise and claimed she was a woefully under-utilised diva who WWE wasn't doing enough with. Friends in high places may be of great aid to her in the tumultuous WWE political environment. Maybe Punk, or someone else, will put in a good word for her and convince the booking team to give her a shot on top.
There's also the fact that Beth is one determined lady. As someone who struggled her way up from the indies and then faced serious and painful injuries, including major reconstructive knee surgery that kept her out for five months in 2010, as well as having faced an often apathetic booking team, Beth has earned her place in the upper echelon of WWE's women's division—and she knows it. After viciously attacking Kelly after winning last week's Diva's Battle Royale, she grabbed the mic and triumphantly declared: “Kelly, your days as the perky, cute, blond little bimbo are officially over.”
Talk about making a statement, huh? In fact, it wouldn't shock me if her remarks to Kelly were one of those work-shoot things that WWE have grown so fond of in recent times, with WWE writers trying to tap into some real-life tension (or, what fans assume is a real-life tension) between the women wrestlers in WWE like Beth and Nattie (and the recently departed Gail Kim and Melina) who feel they have paid their dues but are being overlooked for the more photogenic but lesser talent women like Kelly. Interestingly, Nattie herself is doing a similar angle on Smackdown with A.J. Indeed, in the context of the storyline, Beth may have to gain a victory at Summerslam 2011 for the "true" the female wrestlers in the company and score the pin on Kelly.
But perhaps it would be best to end this piece with a word from the woman herself. Speaking to WWE's official website last week, she was asked about her actions but refused to give any straight answers, instead insisting, “You want a real story? Tune into SummerSlam 2011 and watch me win the Divas Championship for the first time."
source : bleacherreport.com
