Website / Diva Dirt

Diva Dirt is a wrestling website dedicated entirely to promoting women's wrestling. While hardly the first of its kind - Lethal WOW and OWOW predated it by nearly a decade - it is easily the most famous.

Diva Dirt began humbly in 2008 with just two writers Melanie and Erin recapping the female-related segments on WWE's weekly programming. The site quickly gained traction among women's wrestling fans and had expanded massively by the end of the year - to include recaps on TNA and the independent scene too. It was soon discovered by plenty of wrestling women, many of whom expressed public support for it. Former WWE employees like Krissy Vaine and Maria Kanellis have written for it since. Plenty of noted women from WWE, TNA and the independents have been interviewed for it. In fact, when a woman is released from WWE or TNA, Diva Dirt is usually the first place she will give a shoot interview.

Melanie and Erin eventually stepped down but the website is still up and running and just as successful as ever. Fun fact: the infamous 2015 hashtag 'Give Divas a Chance'^note In response to a thirty-second Squash Match being the main women's segment on an episode of Raw, suspiciously a week after Brie Bella did an interview where she wished main roster matches could get as much time as the ones on NXT. started on Diva Dirt.

Tropes:

• Aborted Arc: Several columns and features have been started and discontinued over the years.
• Artifact Title: WWE dropped the 'Diva' moniker in 2016 but the website's title remains the same.
• Audience Participation:
  • The 'Post Raw Show' usually had an opportunity for fans to call in and ask questions.
  • David hosted a brief feature called 'Fanline' where wrestling fans were interviewed.
• Beauty Is Bad: Discussed numerous times on the website, particularly when Tamina Snuka is involved. Melanie once did an article on why people assumed that because she had a Wrestling Family and didn't fit the stereotypical 'Diva' appearance, that she was automatically better in the ring. She highlighted the Double Standard that Tamina was given a free pass because of her looks - when she had less ring experience than the likes of Kelly Kelly, Eve Torres and the Bella Twins.
• Beige Prose: Steven was known for his short, blunt reviews in contrast to the other longer ones.
• Berserk Button:
  • Having short matches is guaranteed to have the writers ranting about giving more time.
  • Fanservice matches or silly Diva segments will usually be met with disdain.
  • The bad booking in TNA - particularly in 2010 - was a sore spot among the reviewers.
• Butt-Monkey: Several women weren't popular with the site's writers and would usually get a thrashing whenever they appeared:
  • Ashley Massaro was widely disliked. The website was just getting started when the scandal about her being linked to an escort service broke - and the writers viewed it as a Point-and-Laugh Show.
  • Maria Kanellis, who even got a whole article titled "Maria Proves Why She Doesn't Belong In The WWE".
  • Candice Michelle, to the degree where there was usually a lot of complaints from fans whenever Candice was criticised. One news article even alluded to "if you're one of Candice's two fans".
  • Jack really didn't like Aksana and would constantly mock the crawl she did in the ring whenever he had to review one of her matches.
• Critical Dissonance: invoked Diva Dirt has stepped out of line with the popular opinion regarding certain storylines and wrestlers:
  • Michelle McCool had a huge smark hatedom during her prominence. However Diva Dirt were huge supporters of hers.
  • Although they disliked the initial idea of the Piggy James storyline, once the segments started getting more airtime than usual, they were more receptive to it.
  • Kelly Kelly's push as the Divas' Champion was viewed as a great boost for the division, considering she at least got to TV unlike so many of the others.
  • Before Vickie Guerrero won over the vast majority of the crowd, Diva Dirt were already fans of hers.
  • Stephanie McMahon tends to get divisive reactions. Diva Dirt have nothing but praise for her.
  • Melanie was anxiously awaiting a Heel–Face Turn for Alicia Fox and praised her for it. Most fans seem to prefer Alicia as a heel.
  • Eva Marie also gets considerably less hate on Diva Dirt than on other sites.
  • Cryssi didn't give Lacey Von Erich as much hate as others did.
  "Lacey fans aren't fans because she's an amazing wrestler (at least I hope not). Lacey fans are fans because she has a great character and looks fabulous."
  • The Bella Twins segment involving the infamous "I wish you'd died in the womb" line - that got an induction by WrestleCrap? Bobby loved it.
  • Jack felt Paige's line about Reid Flair was actually a good heel move, although he may have not known that the Flair family weren't asked about it yet - as Ric didn't reveal that until several days after the segment aired.
  • On the flip side Melanie wasn't a fan of the Trish Stratus vs Mickie James match at WrestleMania 22 - which is considered by many casual fans to be one of the best women's matches in the events' history.
  • Another inverse where the writers were pretty indifferent to Eve's title push in 2010, calling her reign 'generic'. The crowds were however giving Eve very nice reactions.
• Cue the Flying Pigs: Melanie had this reaction whenever Jerry Lawler said something useful about the Divas as opposed to gushing over their looks.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Bobby once published an article about Nidia Guenard and how she seemed to be overlooked by fans of the Ruthless Aggression Era, despite being heavily involved in the product at the time.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • If one reads the articles from 2008 and 2009, the writing style was very sarcastic and biased towards the writers' preferred women. Even the news articles - the Ashley Massaro escort scandal was in fact pretty mocking towards Ashley. These days the website is much more neutral, and opinions are kept to the weekly recaps. Essentially it went from being a blog to a legitimate news site.
  • The website covered only WWE in its early days, with only the occasional mention of TNA. These days any kind of women's wrestling is given notice.
  • These days everything is separated into a specific category, which didn't happen until a few months into the site's creation.
  • 2008's Year End Awards had a section called 'The Hot Mess Awards', voting on the worst aspects of the year. This was dropped for the 2009 edition.
• Even the Girls Want Her: One feature is to review the Diva photoshoots on WWE.com and the writers would gush about the Divas' beauty.
• Evil Twin: The 'Hot Mess Awards' were this to the Year End Awards, highlighting the worst of the year.
• Fanservice: When the Divas did a 'Summer Skin' photoshoot in 2008, there was a big feature about it with individual articles dedicated to each Diva's pictures.
• Franchise Original Sin: invoked Discussed when re-watching some older matches. It's noted that although the 2002-2004 era was seen as a boom period for the Divas, there were some of the same problems that plagued them in later years - notably some T&A taking centre stage and talented women being misused. Jacqueline being used as a referee for instance.
• Honorary True Companion:
  • Chris was not an official writer at first but frequently made video packages to hype up PPV matches.
  • John Canton of The John Report wrote several Guest Blogs for the site in 2010.
• Hypocrite: The site was not happy with the 'Piggy James' storyline when they themselves noted Mickie James's weight gain earlier in the year, and had previously attacked Candice for being "out of shape" and "tubby". They also expressed outrage at Cherry allegedly being fired for her weight (which Cherry herself later confirmed was not true), while they had criticised her for it in the past as well.
• Identical Stranger: Verbal example. Melanie was noted to have a voice that sounded almost identical to Katie Lea Burchill.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: Erin was by far the most critical and negative writer on the site. She bordered on The Eeyore during roundtables.
• Lighter and Softer: Cryssi initially had a rather snarky and negative style of writing, along the same lines as Erin. Around 2011-ish, she opted to become more positive.
• Meaningful Rename: Krissy Vaine published an article about changing her ring name to Kristin Astara.
• The Nicknamer: Several women got nicknames from the writers for one reason or another.
  • Stephanie McMahon is 'Queen Stephanie' for obvious reasons.
  • Michelle McCool - 'Monotone McCool' for her initially montonous promos.
  • Alicia Fox - 'Alicia Fierce' for her sassy attitude. Sasha Banks was later nicknamed 'Sasha Fierce' for the same reasons.
  • Miss USA Rima Fakih - 'Miss Ghetto USA' for getting into a fight on the first episode of Tough Enough and 'Miss Late USA' - for arriving late to practice on the second.
  • Ashley Massaro - 'Trashley'. The writers really weren't fans of hers.
  • Aksana's seductive crawl around the ring was nicknamed 'The Catwoman Crawl'.
  • Bobby nicknamed Maxine's unnamed double underhook finisher 'Maximum Destruction'.
• The One Guy: Steven for a while was the only male writer for the site, though David published an occasional column too.
• One-Steve Limit: Former Diva Krissy Vaine joined the site to write a column while they already had another writer called Cryssi. Both were southern too.
• The Pollyanna: Writer Bobby was noted for finding something positive in every situation. Cryssi soon embraced this attitude too.
• Purple Prose: Jack's articles tended to feature a lot of this.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: The raison d'etre of the site was to criticise the hell out of this trope.
• Recognition Failure: When reviewing the match at WrestleMania 24 Melanie took time to say "Candice Michelle looked very pretty in her dress", and later wondered where Eve Torres was. Commenters pointed out that Eve was at ringside, while Candice wasn't.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: invoked You can go back and read several articles from the past, seeing how the writers were won over by some women.
  • Beth Phoenix was viewed as decent in the ring but a bland character. During her 2008 feud with Melina, Melanie and Erin were visibly impressed. General consensus was "where was this while she was champion?"
  • Bella Twins were viewed as pretty useless after a while, and the writers were openly wondering what they were even doing in WWE. Even as early as getting a chance to show their personalities on ECW and especially after their Face–Heel Turn in 2011, they were soon beloved by most of the writers.
  • Brooke Adams was met with a roll of the eye when she popped up in TNA - and used as an example of how desperate they were to hire someone who used to be in WWE. By the time she won the Knockouts Championship, she was championed by everyone on the site.
  • Kelly Kelly wasn't thought too highly of. But some good matches with Beth Phoenix in 2008 and a good run on Smackdown in 2010 caused writers to warm to her.
  • Maria Kanellis earned more respect after giving several interviews in which she expressed the same opinions as they did on how the women were mistreated.
  • Cameron was laughed at for her infamous behaviour on Tough Enough. Once she started working regularly, she got lots of praise.
  • Maryse played it straight and then inverted it. Melanie was initially furious that Natalya was pushed aside in favour of Maryse, but quickly warmed to her when she impressed in the ring. But then after her injury, she noted that Maryse had regressed massively in the ring.
• Shoot the Messenger: Discussed by Cryssi when it came to the infamous Madison Rayne/Roxxi match in 2010^note Roxxi arrived at the PPV to be told that she would in fact be losing a Title vs Career match, meaning she was fired, reminding fans not to attack Madison for simply being the character that retired Roxxi.
• Small Reference Pools: Diva is what WWE called its female performers when the website first started, hence the title. Diva Dirt is usually the only women's wrestling website mentioned or used as a source in other articles.
• The Smurfette Principle: This trope is the reason that the website exists. The majority of wrestling websites and columnists had nothing but disdain for the Diva segments. The website chose to focus and analyse only those portions of the show, providing Diva fans with an outlet they may not have had before.
• Southern Belle: Invoked by writer Cryssi, who titled her column 'Southern Belle Smack'.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: invoked When reviewing the infamous NXT Season 3, Cryssi approached it from a serious POV, and in fact took it more seriously than the actual commentary team on TV.
• World of Snark: Definitely early on, where the writing style was especially sarcastic.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: invoked Articles usually have a 'Fashion Focus' section where the ring gear and street clothes would be critiqued. Maria Kanellis was usually attacked for her wardrobe choices. Melanie is also a fashion journalist.