The biggest surprise on the debut episode of Impact Wrestling on Destination America last week wasn’t the title change at the end, or the surprising turns of Samoa Joe and Low-Ki.
It ended up being Awesome Kong, making her return to TNA and her first appearance on television since her appearance at the Royal Rumble as Kharma in 2012. Few thought Kong would ever return to TNA after her incident with Bubba the Love Sponge but a lot has changed since then. It’s a surprise she wouldn’t just go back to the WWE, where the two seemed to leave on good terms, but that’s beside the point. Lights out, lights on, Awesome Kong.
Kong immediately tied up with Havok, who has been built up in recent months as being very similar to what Kong was to the original Knockouts division. Taller, thicker and stronger than anyone else on the Knockouts division, Havok felt like a mountain near impossible to move. For the smaller framed wrestlers like Taryn Terrell and Gail Kim, she presented a challenge like a super heavyweight. But when put up face to face with Awesome Kong? It’s a situation of equals.
It made sense to put the two together. Keeping them separated could have been good for long-term storyline purposes but it’s such a distinct visual that you have to get them working against each other. It’s like when The Big Show came into the WWF. Everyone wanted to see him mix it up with Undertaker and Kane. When Kevin Nash debuted in WCW, it looked like a Giant vs. Nash match was going to happen sooner than later. WCW had the luxury to put Giant in the New World Order to delay it. TNA didn’t have that with Havok.
But one has to wonder what the end result is going to be of having two heavyweight Knockouts battle each other for the next coming months. With television and limited PPV, there’s only so many combinations you can do between the women. Eventually it’s going to run its course, or worse, get stale. TNA is going to need to consider some options.
The first option would be to have the women team up and re-start the Knockouts Tag division. As existing titles, they’d be much like when Sid and Big Van Vader came together in WCW or Kane and the Undertaker formed the Brothers of Destruction. Put two threatening monsters together and make things feel even more daunting than before. A run with the two could legitimize the titles after the wedding antics of Eric Young and ODB or the stale taste of the Beautiful People running the division. Having the Knockouts Tag division can ensure the two don’t interfere with Taryn Terrell’s run as Knockouts champion and let her work with wrestlers her size.
My other suggestion is a little more difficult to pull off: A Knockouts Heavyweight division.
It might need a different name. How do you distinguish the Knockouts from this new division. Maybe call it the Amazon division. Right now I’ll stick to Knockouts Heavyweight. Two women don’t make a division, but it could make the start of one. Having Awesome Kong and Havok needing their own title to fight for could help attract some new blood to the company that wouldn’t fit right in the regular Knockouts. Terrell, Gail Kim, Madison Rayne, they fit better together with maybe sporadic challenges against the bigger women. But you bring back ODB and put her with Kong and Havok and you suddenly have three women that can mix it together with imposing physiques.
Who else could be added? There’s a former Knockout that used to definitely be in the “heavyweight” category named Rosie Lottalove. She didn’t last very long in TNA and retired in 2012 due to injuries. After the injuries, she decided to get in better shape and lose some pounds. She lost over 100lbs and was no longer recognizable to her former Rosie Lottalove. She’s making a comeback now as Andréa, standing at 6’1” and 189lbs. Even with the weight loss, at that height she wouldn’t really fit with the smaller women in the Knockouts division. Andréa would fit perfectly with Kong, Havoc and ODB. Now you have four names and four is definitely a division.
This would let you break the matches off to having Andréa facing Kong and ODB facing Havok, letting you keep the original two separated and develop good matches for the division. The harder hitting brawlers of the Knockout Heavyweights would be a good contrast to the faster, nimbler regular Knockouts and give a contrast similar to the TNA Heavyweight division and the X-Division. It would also be unlike anything provided in the WWE, and TNA needs concepts that differentiate them and keeps them as an alternative.
It’s a hard sell and would probably need a few more names. It’d be difficult to convince Beth Phoenix to come out of retirement but other targets could be Canadian wrestlers Persephone Vice and Vanessa Kraven, or a woman that worked in TNA during a U.K. tour two years ago in The Alpha Female. Even going a little shorter and having the likes of Cheerleader Melissa (having worked in TNA as Alissa Flash) or Ohio born, former Rosebud Mary Elizabeth Monroe could work for the division.
Would it be tough to find a lot of names for such a division compared to the X Division? Sure. But the X Division now has competition with Lucha Underground and folks in NXT. It isn’t the revolutionary, can’t find anywhere else other than the indies concept it used to be. The WWE loves to claim they are taking their women serious but they are still just fodder for the Total Divas show than actual wrestling competitors. TNA has done a Knockouts division right more than wrong and expanding to either bringing back the Knockout Tag championship or adding a weight class for the harder hitting women is a way to bring a real alternative spin to the new TNA. UFC knows that women fighting can sell and it’s time pro wrestling gets the memo again. It should be considered.
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