Vintage Week In Review For Women's Wrestling #6

This is the week beginning January 3rd - January 13th 2002. There was no actual Raw show so I'm lumping the two Smackdowns into one entry.

Smackdown:
Lilian Garcia interviews Jazz and officially welcomes her to the WWF. Jazz cuts a very strong promo saying how she isn't here to be interviewed and how she won't sleep her way to the top like the rest of the Divas. She shoves Lilian and stalks off. Very impressive debut interview for her and certainly generates some excitement for the upcoming angle with Trish.

Jazz def. Mighty Molly:
As a follow up to last week's attack, Molly gets a chance at revenge and is officially a babyface now. Unfortunately Jazz has a godawful entrance theme that sounds like it belongs on Super Mario or Crash Bandicoot. Jazz attacks Molly straight away but the superheroine uses quickness to get the better of her with a nice headscissors. Jazz hotshots Molly onto the top rope *twice* and continues to dominate with a series of *three* butterfly suplexes. She misses a splash and Molly again resorts to quickness to try and offset her but Jazz floats over from a scoop slam attempt and finishes her off with a Fisherman's Suplex.
Following up an impressive debut interview, she gets an impressive debut match. Naturally Molly works well with everyone and she and Jazz only had a couple of matches together during their stint in WWE as they were both heels the majority of the time. In fact if Molly hadn't been turned heel and Jazz hadn't been injured, I think this is a good feud that could have been explored. It was a short match but it was memorable and served its purpose to put Jazz over as something impressive. 7/10


We also saw a bit of Torrie Wilson who got harassed by Test backstage which led to a match with Tajiri. Torrie's involvement consisted of looking disgusted when Test won by cheating.
Also Stephanie McMahon made an appearance trying to get into the building but being refused because her name wasn't on the list. She was seen again in another segment where she tried to seduce the security guard who unfortunately for her was gay. Later on in the night she ran into the arena during a Ric Flair promo and threatened him because Triple H was set to return from injury. When he mocked her she slapped him in the face and said he had four days to decide if he wanted her allegiance or not. Oh and the heat she got was amazing. Watching a master at work here.

Raw:
We see our Women's Champion Trish Stratus live from WWF New York saying hi to all the fans. She is rudely interrupted by Terri Runnels who challenges her to a Wet T-Shirt contest, which Trish accepts. Uh oh...
Later on in the evening we have Trish and Terri in the ring with Jerry Lawler for the contest and he gleefully hoses Terri down with a Super Soaker and is preparing to spray Trish when...
All of a sudden Jazz appears on the scene and attacks Trish, laying her out with a DDT exactly like she did on Smackdown and she has to be chased out of the ring by Jerry Lawler.
Great segment and great way to follow up on Jazz's sneak-attack. It seems to be a tried and tested formula in WWE that if you want a female monster heel, just have her interrupt some T&A type segment. Here it was used to further storylines and it was an excellent way to do so. It builds a lot of heat for Jazz for not only attacking the big fan favourite, but also for denying the fans what they want to see. They'd do a similar angle with Molly Holly later in the year, and Victoria in 2005 and really Beth and Natalya this year. I believe this was the first time they ever actually did it in WWE so it must have been even more exciting at the time. Back then people were wondering how Trish would fare in matches against Jazz and of course we can say they were a hit but back then this was the first step Trish would take towards gaining respect as an in-ring performer. Segment rating: 7/10


Smackdown #2:
Stephanie McMahon and Debra kick off the show with Steph snidely remarking that her husband would kick Debra's husband's ass at the Royal Rumble. Can't believe *both* of these women were actually Women's Champion at one point. Stephanie continues on to the ring where she cuts a lengthy promo on how Triple H is returning and everyone else better be on notice. I'll admit, she rambled on a bit and took more time than she probably needed but she was very entertaining on the mic. Plus she looked great as well.

So the official start of a very promising feud came this week and it's one that many Diva fans remember fondly. Jazz was certainly something new in the division and her presence really shook things up even if she only spent a short amount of time on the roster.