10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About TNA
2. They Gave Women A Chance First
WWE's Women's Revolution is a huge part of their product. To their credit, the company have completely revamped the division over the past few years, and while genuine parity with the men is still to come, WWE have never treated women's wrestling with such respect.
The old tropes are largely gone. Aesthetics-based pushes, the awful 'Divas' nomenclature, strip matches: they're all dead and buried. Now, WWE's women are pushed (mostly) on merit, and while the company still have a few hurdles to leap, they've done a decent job.
Here's the thing, though: TNA did it first.
Stephanie McMahon would have you believe that the 'Revolution' was some grand brainwave cooked up in WWE creative meetings, but this isn't true. The fact is that TNA were pushing their Knockouts division long before them. WWE's switch in focus wasn't an innovation, but the company finally catching up with the times.
Impact were promoting women as legitimate competitors as far back as 2007. The company's first Knockouts Champion, Gail Kim, became a Hall of Famer, and she was joined by the likes of Awesome Kong, Tara, Madison Rayne, and later, Mickie James. Each was allowed to succeed in an egalitarian environment, and while the division did occasionally plumb the depths, such incidents were the exception rather than the rule.