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Christy Hemme: An Insult To Women's Wrestling
February 17, 2005 by David Jacobs

Here's the story: After watching RAW on Monday night, I am very upset. Christy Hemme (you know the Playboy cover girl, ditsy diva, total waste of my time. If you don't know who she is, I don't blame you) has got a Women's Title shot at WRESTLEMANIA 21! Huh" Wait a minute. Christy Hemme has got a Women's Title shot at WRESTLEMANIA 21" Please tell me if I'm wrong but has Christy Hemme ever wrestled in a match in her life" Has she ever done anything but bounce up and down like a frickin rabbit" And now she has a Women's Title shot" At Wrestlemania" The granddaddy of them all" So, she has a title shot at Wrestlemania while great female wrestlers like Victoria and Molly Holly sit in the back and Jazz, Nidia, and Gail Kim rot on the indy circuit" That is not right. Christy Hemme doesn't deserve a match with a great wrestler like Trish Stratus. Especially for the Women's Title.

The Women's Title is a title that goes back to The Fabulous Moolah and has had titleholders like Sherri Martel, Lita, Gail Kim, Trish, Molly, Victoria, Madusa, Wendi Richter, and Lelani Kai. These women are great wrestlers. For Christy to even get a title shot throws all this history down the drain. This kills women's wrestling.

Women's wrestling dates back to the days of Mildred Burke challenging men to wrestling matches and defeating them. By the way, this was when you didn't have to be pretty to be considered a great wrestler. Anyway, after Mildred Burke's life came crashing down, the next famous woman wrestler was Slave Girl Moolah. She was also the valet to Buddy Rogers. Then, she beat Judy Grable to win the Women's Title. After The Fabulous Moolah, came Sherri Martel, the first woman wrestler to wear face paint. A lot of people remember her for being the valet for Randy Savage, HBK, Marty Jannetty, and Harlem Heat in WCW. But, she was a great wrestler and beat The Fabulous Moolah for the Women's Title. After her came Madusa Micelli. She is a former AWA Women's champion, WCW Women's Champ, and WWE Women's Champ. She threw the WWE Women's Championship Belt in the trash on WCW Nitro. She won the WCW Cruiserweight Championship, which was a man's belt. She and the next woman I'm going to mention, Chyna, impacted Women's Wrestling in a huge way. Chyna was brought in as Hunter Hearst Helmsley's bodyguard and she evolved into her own character. She finally broke away from HHH and got a personality. She won the IC Title and eventually won the Women's Title which she held until her release. One of the people that Chyna feuded with was Trish Stratus, our current Women's Champion. She was brought in to manage Test and Albert (T&A, get it). She slowly started to wrestle and slowly became a great wrestler and a 6-time Women's Champion. Other women like Lita, Victoria, Molly, Ivory (who was a real throwback to old-school women's wrestling), Jazz, Gail Kim, Nidia, Bull Nakano, and Bertha Faye were in wrestling during these eras and they greatly influenced women wrestling.

Now, onto the Raw Diva Search, the dark spot on women's wrestling (the reason I'm mentioning this is because it leads to Christy vs. Trish). It was a joke. It was a waste of money. It was a waste of time. It was a waste of talent. It was a waste of FYE's money for the DVD. It was a waste of Spike TV's money for the special of this. Now, what would normal people do" Normal people would forget about everything and everyone involved in this bad idea. Vince McMahon is not a normal person. He not only signs Christy, the winner, but puts her in a huge feud with a great wrestler. Not only does Vince do this, he uses 5 losers (Candace, Carmella, Amy, Joy, and Michelle). That's overkill. And this leads to him using Rochelle and Lauren. More T&A. This ultimately leads to Christy vs. Trish at Wrestlemania 21.

So, after all this history and lineage (with the exception of the Raw Diva Search), why would anyone want to diminish it all with Christy Hemme challenging Trish for the Women's Title at Wrestlemania"

I appreciate ALL feedback and would love to hear reviews you readers have. Thanks for reading.

by David Jacobs ..

Kim wrote:
The Diva search was totlay pointless. So was firing nearly all the women who could wrestle. It should be Trish v Victoria at wrestlemania, at least Victoria deserves it.

RuthlessGattman wrote:
I admit that the Raw Diva Search was a complete waste of time. Though what they're doing with Christy is interesting. I don't have a problem with her if she is ACTUALLY being trained to wrestle rather than prance around in nearly no clothing. However, if Christy actually wins the title, that's a big downfall. Here are women who've trained for years to get their spot in the women's division and busting their asses then here comes some ditsy playboy cover girl and trains for less than a month then wins the title. not a good situation.

Ditto Robertson wrote:
I couldn't agree more with you. Now, I've hated wrestlers before. (Admit it; even when you like their performance, it's fun to get caught up in the whole throwing-popcorn-at-the-heels-on-TV mad. I mean, that's what makes wrestling fun!) But I have such a genuine disliking for this Christy person. I really can't describe it. Christy is just using the WWE to get to Playboy and (very much like her other job) get some sort of sick, twisted satisfaction of people paying to see her half naked. If they give Christy the Women's Title, they may as well spit on it and throw it in the garbage can. It makes me sick to know that Christy is getting the privellage of going to Wrestlemania 21 while real wrestlers beat themselves up for not trying hard enough and hope for a match (the match they've already earned) next year. I really hope Christy knows what she's doing and that it breaks her heart. Of course, I'm a well wisher, in that I don't wish her any (specific) harm. But she wouldn't be as unbearable if she realized how selfish she was. I think you worded it best; insult to womens wrestling and TOTAl waste of my time!

Lewis Cole wrote:
I have to say, I both agree and disagree with you on this matter, as it is not Christy's fault that she was put into a feud with (in my opinion) the greatest women's wrestler of all time.

Christy entered a competition for fun and thought that she could win, which she did, and all power to her. She has been training and I am actually enjoying the feud between her and Trish, as it is a perfect time-filling feud so that Lita can rest and recuperate after her injury at New Year's Revolution.

The animosity between these two women is shown on Monday Night RAW, and I especially enjoy their conversations and the fact that they have done something that no other female feud has (the 'spray paint sl*t incident). I hope that they have an excellent match at Wrestlemania and I think that they will. If the other women on RAW like Trish, Victoria and Molly can accept Christy Hemme into their locker room, I think that you can at least respect her as someone who is trying hard to fit into this business.

J D wrote:
Hey, I read your column and understood where you were coming from, but I think the Christy Hemme match is just a way to help promote her Playboy apperance. So I don't think this match should be taken very seriously. I figure that Christy will lose and this whole story is also just a filler storyline untill Lita has healed up completly and is able to reclaim the title.

Rhey Higgins wrote:
Actually, Christy has had some matches: she's undefeated in Lingerie Pillow Fights. Oh, she also has done WAY too many time-wasting vignettes, while talented wrestlers like Chris Benoit sit in the back or wrestle on Sunday Night Heat. But, as for an actual WRESTLING match, instead of a bunch of useless, time wasting garbage, no, she hasn't done anything. So, all in all, Christy is a time-wasting bitch (albeit a hot time-wasting bitch) who needs to be taken off of WWE TV IMMEDIATELY!!!! If she wins the Women's Title at Wrestlemania 21, then the prestige that was added to it in the Lita/Trish main even title match will be gone, and the belt might as well be changed to The Playboy Title.

Phil T. wrote:
I agree with 90% of your column Dave. The Diva Contest was by far the biggest bunch of diarrhea the WWE has put on television for such an extended period of time in the last ten years!! Also I agree that Christy does not deserve to be in the Women's Title match on the greatest show on earth. Unfortunately WWE Superstars that deserve championship matches means absolute crap these days compared to what McMahon says we (Fans) want to see. I know I'm in the minority or maybe I'm the absolute only one who feels this way, but give Christy a chance. I think many fans only hate her because she was unfortunately introduced to us through the Diva Search. This has led to many fans not taking her seriously. So far I have no complaints at all with Christy. I thought she did one hell of a job in her WrestleMania 21 commercial with Angle and I feel though her mic skills aren't the best they could be, they are better then some of the current Divas in WWE. Now if McMahon lets Christy and Trish have a back and forth match with Trish calling most of it due to her experience, I believe on a scale of one too ten, these two could deliver a seven. So everyone chill out on Christy till after WrestleMania. If the match sucks, OK rip her a new ass. If the match is good you can kiss mine.

JLR wrote:
If the WWE fundamentally believes that they can just pick up women from streets and make them click to the wrestling ring, then they've been living under a rock. And what's the whole point about winning the Women's Title anyway " 70% of the female competitors are gone and the only ones that are left are those that have wrestled each other over a hundred times. Like the Cruiserweight title, you might as well dump the Women's title since it's been rendered worthless. It's moments like this that makes me wanna how the WWE could go from destroying WCW with 6.5 ratings and then automatically be reduced to garbage like this. What total nonsense!

Richard Davis wrote:
I have been a fan of women's wrestling since the days when Moolah made life hell for Vicki Williams. The training, bumps and bruises, blood, sweat and tears women like Moolah, Williams, Velvet McIntyre, Leilani Kai, Judy Martin, Donna Christanello, Wenona Little Heart, Joyce Grable, Sue Green, Sherri Martel, Rockin' Robin, The Jumping Bomb Angels, Madusa Micelli, Luna Vachon and the current era of women who have toiled in the WWE has been for nought; crapped on by Vince McMahon. Thanks to the quick fix (spelled M-O-N-E-Y) that Playboy provides the WWE and their worthless new Divas, the current trend toward bimbos is not likely to change.

For a time, I thought that the women's division was headed toward new heights. You had Trish, Molly, Lita, Victoria, Jazz, Nidia, Gail Kim, Linda Miles and occasionally, Ivory and Jacqueline plus jobbers in Torrie, Dawn and Terri Runnels. Add in the fact they had Alexis Laree, Melina Perez and Nidia's sister, Lourdes (Nurse Lulu) at OVW and I thought a renaissance was about to occur for women's wrestling.

I could envision angles, stables, alliances and double crosses. Lita aligns herself with Trish and Victoria versus Molly, Gail and Jazz. In comes Ivory siding with the faces only for Trish to turn heel. Then, the faces could recruit Nidia only for Victoria to revert to her demented persona. Overmatched, Lita and Nidia could be facing annihilation when Alexis Laree and April Hunter show up to even the odds. Ah, what could have been.

Presto, Blammo! The whole group is cut to four women (one of whom is constantly injury prone). Add in that the women in the developmental territory are being packaged to be eye candy and not bona-fide wrestlers and it's clear nobody is going to care about the division for quite some time.

Sadly, this means women like April Hunter, Erica Porter (who Superfly Splash would have made the fans go nuts), Mercedes Martinez, Melissa Coates and others will be forced to toil on the independent circuit without the exposure they are worthy of. These are, indeed, dark days for women's wrestling.

Dogg721899774 wrote:
i totally disagree with the way everyone is critocising Christy Hemme. i think Christy deserves a title match at WrestleMania (however Trish is my faviourate women's wrestler of all time) i think Christy deserves some credit, for someone who is challenging the best women's wrestler ever you have all got to give Christy some credit like her or not, Trish was trained by my fellow Irish-Man Dave "Fit" Finlay and Trish will put up an excellent fight but give Christy some credit she just want's to entertain the fan's & do her job. yes there are more experienced Diva's like Molly Holly & Victoria but give Christy a chance. now i'm not a fan of Playboy whatsoever but i'm a fan of Christy and i think she has got what it takes to compete in the WWE. holla player's!!

Peter wrote:
The women's title was once taking seriously. Now, I think it should be thrown in the garbage. Once it was a very great honor to have that title but now it is nothing but belt, only a belt. I think the WWE is a bunch on idiots who need to fire all their writers. It seems these days that the WWE is more like a soap opera. Christy Hemme, a rookie for Christ sakes!!!!!! We see Torrie Wilson have a Playboy Cover, but did she get a title shot, No!!!!!!!!!!! and what makes it worse it is on the biggest stage of them all, Wrestlemania. They fire Gail Kim and Nidia and bring in this bimbo. She should be switched to Smackdown! immediately and flash her stuff over there. Okay, if she wants the title than do it on Raw, it sucks bad as it is anyway. Trish Stratus is a veteran at what she does. Christy Hemme hasn't been in the WWE that long, only a few months. We don't see Daniel Puder "Tough Enough" winner going for the WWE Championship or even the United States Championship. You know what he is doing" He's down at the OVW training to be a better a wrestler, I advise Christy to do that as well if she wants to take wrestling seriously, Miss Jackie did it after winning "Touch Enough 2" and for those who say "Give Christy credit" are stupid! The WWE hands Christy Hemme a storyline she'd better do it, if she wants to keep her job. That's right she needs to do it, like it or not. A stupid storyline I might add. Hopefully she does win it, so Molly Holly and Victoria can kick her ass! J

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