Women's wrestling has been considered many things over the past few years, such as a joke, a bathroom break, a time where the fans in the arena go and get snacks, among other things. Many fans blame it on the quality of the female wrestlers in WWE and TNA these days, but half of the blame should be on the creative teams themselves for the decline in women's wrestling. While I'd be obviously lying if I said that the likes of the Bellas are good workers, there is still a solid amount of talent that isn't being used to its full potential. In WWE, you have Gail Kim, Beth Phoenix, Natalya, Kharma, and Melina who are all capable of putting on a very good match and in TNA there's Mickie James, Tara, Winter, Sarita, and Angelina Love who are capable of it. Most of these women are definitely capable of putting on three star matches, yet most of the time women's matches are lucky to get even one star ratings these days. Why is that? Is it because of the other talent surrounding these workers? Sometimes, yes, but often times this isn't the case.
Televised women's matches in WWE last an average of 1-2 minutes. ON AVERAGE. This isn't anywhere near enough time to tell a halfway decent story. You could put your two best female wrestlers in a two minute match and it would still be a weak match because the story would be VERY rushed. On PPVs the average women's match goes for around 5 minutes, which is too short for any PPV match to last. Televised TNA Knockouts matches usually last around 3-5 minutes (various matches such as elimination tags can last around 10 minutes) while their PPV matches usually last 7-8 minutes, which makes for enough time to tell a decent story in the match without it feeling too rushed. However, the match quality has declined since they let many of their most talented knockouts go (Gail Kim, Awesome Kong, Alissa Flash, Roxxi, Taylor Wilde, Hamada, Daffney) and have misused all their original knockouts outside of the ones that were in the Beautiful People stable since Hogan/Bischoff came in.
Also, in WWE, the lack of characters and storylines for many of the female talent has resulted in dead crowds during their matches, which can hurt the quality of a match. When was the last REAL women's feud in WWE that didn't involve LayCool? From what I recall, Beth/Melina in 2008. THREE YEARS AGO. The last one that had regular promo work was the Trish/Mickie feud in 2006, FIVE YEARS AGO. How are you supposed to get over when you have no storylines to work with? And it's not like many of them have actual characters either. Only Melina, Maryse, Natalya, and Layla have well-defined characters, and the first three rarely get any promo time whatsoever. Without character, storylines, and promo time, it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to care about the wrestlers. Guest commentary and backstage skits aren't nearly enough... in TNA every knockout has their own character and gets regular mic time. As a result, I care about their storylines and the outcomes of their matches.
How to make it matter again? Simple, give the women more than two minutes in the ring so it can be possible to have a decent match and tell a good story in it, and give them well-defined characters so the fans can relate to them, and mic time so they can get their stories over, which in turn can create fan interest in their PPV matches. TNA did all of this stuff very well in the Mickie/Madison feud with both of them getting regular promo time and Madison continuing to win dirty, gaining her heel heat, until Mickie won the payoff match at Lockdown. WWE has talent equal to these two, if not better, so why not utilize it to its maximum potential? Many of the younger fans brought in as a result of the PG rating would be surprised at what some of these girls can do with an extra few minutes...
