On the state of the Knockouts division: "The female talent, there’s not a lot of female talent that’s on the level of these girls. Angelina Love was gone for several years and came back and I think she came back better than ever. Madison Rayne was gone for a year and she came back in the best shape of her life after having a baby. There’s only so many women in the world that can compete on this level, and if they can’t compete on the level, it’s not worth having them on the roster. They don’t do the others any favours if they’re not on par with what the Knockouts division has been expected of.
We have to cycle our girls in and out, until someone can come in like a Taryn Terrell, I’ll say for Taryn to come in and have the kind of matches she’s had with Gail Kim, for somebody that’s newer in female wrestling it doesn’t get much better. She competed blow-to-blow with Gail Kim and held her own and did amazing, that’s what we’re looking for. I would rather refresh characters, but you have to keep the quality of the girls’ wrestling at a certain level or they don’t fit in the Knockouts brand at all." -mirror.co.uk
This is the same rhetoric Dixie always offers up about the Knockouts, but once again, her comments not only make absolutely no sense, but also make her sound like a giant hypocrite. I wish we could just get a straight, honest answer out of her, but for some reason that never seems to happen.
"there’s not a lot of female talent that’s on the level of these girls."
That is not true at all. TNA have tried out many girls who are every bit as good or better than the women they employ, and passed on them for no apparent reason. ex. Ivelisse, Shanna, Veda Scott, Kay Lee Ray, etc.
"Angelina Love was gone for several years and came back and I think she came back better than ever."
That's an outright lie. Better than ever? Um... no. More like Angelina's been phoning it in and half-assing her performance since she returned. Angelina's best days as a wrestler seem to be behind her and anyone with a pair of eyes can see that she's not what she used to be.
"There’s only so many women in the world that can compete on this level, and if they can’t compete on the level, it’s not worth having them on the roster."
Then how do you explain signing women like Cookie, Lei'D Tapa, and Lacey Von Erich, all of whom were embarrassingly bad? How do you explain signing Rebel, who had exactly zero experience when she came in, while saying that Kay Lee Ray (who, on her worst day, could wrestle circles around Rebel and most of the other Knockouts as well) wasn't ready? How do you explain employing Velvet Sky for years? Velvet may be popular, but if the prerequisite really is being able to perform in the ring at a certain level like you say, then Velvet would not be there and we all know it.
"They don’t do the others any favours if they’re not on par with what the Knockouts division has been expected of."
The same can be said about several of the Knockouts currently on your roster, but I don't see you getting rid of them to make way for women who are better performers than they are. If you have your reasons for keeping them, fine, but please just tell us what they are and be straight with us instead of outright avoiding the issue.
"We have to cycle our girls in and out, until someone can come in like a Taryn Terrell, I’ll say for Taryn to come in and have the kind of matches she’s had with Gail Kim, for somebody that’s newer in female wrestling it doesn’t get much better."
Again, what Dixie is saying makes no sense. They DON'T cycle girls in and out. They've had largely the same roster of Knockouts with very few lasting additions for years now, with the same played out women getting featured over and over and over again. There weren't any noticeable changes until the last year or two, and even then it hasn't been as much as is needed. And again, in that time, they've tried out a number of girls that can perform just as well as Taryn and deliver matches that are just as good, if not better, and passed on them when new additions to the women's roster were sorely needed.
"She competed blow-to-blow with Gail Kim and held her own and did amazing, that’s what we’re looking for. I would rather refresh characters, but you have to keep the quality of the girls’ wrestling at a certain level or they don’t fit in the Knockouts brand at all."
Then why have you passed on so many women who can deliver exactly that while employing women who can't? I don't want to be so critical of Dixie, but comments like these just make me want to pull my hair out because she's obviously lying through her teeth and not even trying to hide it. If you have a certain vision for the Knockouts, so be it. But just say that's what it is instead of telling us something that is clearly not true. And please stop talking about this supposed criteria you say that all prospective Knockouts must meet in order to be allowed to join the division when history has clearly shown that numerous exceptions to it have been made for an apparent wide variety of undisclosed reasons and said criteria is, at best, selectively enforced only when you want it to be.
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