10 Times Impact Wrestling Went Too Far

2. The Life & Death Of The Knockouts Division

Velvet Sky
Impact Wrestling

In 1998, a nothing WWE programme between Goldust and Jeff Jarrett reached the point where both 'The Bizarre One' and Jarrett's manager Debra were "flashing" each other in order to try and cause distractions in key matches. It filled television time, it filled pay-per-view time, but only the sexual titillation served as any kind of financial/ratings draw, such was the appeal at the time.

Read the first words of that paragraph again. The lurid late-90s. Nothing programmes. All that sh*t.

When a 2014 Evening Gown "match" between former Knockouts Champions Madison Rayne (five times) and Angelina Love (six times) ended exactly the same way, it was a pathetic reminder that TNA and the rebranded Impact Wrestling had fatally flushed away years of good will with years of bad.

The Knockouts division was birthed in 2007 with a battle royal featuring several under-utilised future female stars, before eventually promoting Gail Kim and Awesome Kong in a main event programme. It acknowledged that mainstream companies weren't doing near-enough to represent women as athletes rather than the 'T&A' the sludgy original version of the company took its name from.

In that sense, it was probably an unrealistic impossibility that anything good could ever come from an organisation with misogyny embedded in the DNA, but the seven year slide from in-ring hits to out-of-the-ring t*ts was made more apparent by the fact that WWE was in the process of finally getting it's own sh*t together at the very same time.

Impact were the alternative yet again, but in keeping with a life lived as wrestling's punchline, they'd somehow found a way to be the greater of two evils. And this particular example wasn't even the worst of their atrocities...

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation nearly 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett