Michelle McCool reportedly injured

[Widow's Peak]

From gerweck.net:

I attented the WWE house show in Hampton Beach, NH tonight. Womens champion Michelle McCool was helped to the back (and had her match cut short and ended in a no contest) after a legit injury.


www.gerweck.net/news/1249105162.shtml

UPDATE: from PW Torch

Torch reader Sam reports from the WWE house show: "McCool was knocked out of the ring by Eve, and was unable to get up. She was deemed unable to continue, and the match was ended early. She was helped out of the arena by an EMT, apparently having injured her right leg."

[BorneAgain]

Hope she recovers okay, but truth be told its not a ridiculous loss to the Women's division.

[Widow's Peak]

I've gone on record with my dislike for McCool, this does hurt the women's title picture a little since she's their top heel. If she's out for any length of time, who takes her place? I suppose you could turn Melina and have her chase Eve.

[Seth Drakin of Monster Crap]

As much as I dont like her, it is tough to go through an injury for anyone in this business. Godspeed on her recovery.

[MrBRulzOK]

First Maryse, now McCool.

Somebody must've recently cursed both women's titles

[Yami Daimao]

Aug 1, 2009 1:31:52 GMT -5 MrBRulzOK said:

First Maryse, now McCool.

Somebody must've recently cursed both women's titles

Aurora Rose: *puts pinky on corner of lower lip* *cue lightning and epic music*

[CMWaters]

Hmm...we'll have to see if her injury is as bad as Maryse's or Edge's.

If it is, the question is what they'll do with the Women's Title...or will they just do like they did with Maryse shortly after she won (or if it's really bad, like they did with Trish during the middle of 2005) and have Michelle keep the title while injured.

Maybe do a Divas battle royal with what few they have on Smackdown to make a new champion that way.

Too bad though. I thought they were hinting at a Michelle/Mickie James match going by the video off WWE.com by Mickie after her win:

www.wwe.com/content/media/video/vms/nightofchampions/2009/july22-28/10997488

[Steveweiser]

Put the belt on Natalya. After all, I'm more excited for Mickie/Natalya than for Mickie/McCool.

[Professor Chaos]

I hope Taker doesn't get involved taping his fists and they end up releasing Eve over it. Eve rocks.

[Ralnathane]

Too bad McCool will likely push for Eve to be fired... and the refuse the sammich offered to her as a peace offering.

[Deleted]

Aug 1, 2009 5:13:47 GMT -5 Ralnathane said:

Too bad McCool will likely push for Eve to be fired... and the refuse the sammich offered to her as a peace offering.

Now I'm certainly no fan of McCool but I don't think that's a fair thing to say about her at all.

It's too bad to hear that she got injured, though...I don't like it when anybody gets injured, even if I don't really like them, and I hope she heals up alright and nothing goes wrong about that. But, at the very least, I suppose the bright side is that someone else will have the opportunity to be the champion now.

Most likely either Melina or Natalya, and I would be just fine with either.

[Confused Mark Wahlberg]

Don't let her cut a promo in the hospital, or they'll think she's in a coma.

[El Hijo del Havoc]

**Cues canned boo from Smackdown**

[dimera]

Aug 1, 2009 1:31:52 GMT -5 MrBRulzOK said:

First Maryse, now McCool.

Somebody must've recently cursed both women's titles

I guess it's time for a blonde break..push Layla to the top dammit!!

[parder]

Seems like there's four options to me:

1) If it's not a serious injury they can just keep the belt on her until she recovers.
2) Put the belt back on Melina, but you're left with a lack of credible heels to feud with.
3) Put the belt on Natalya whose credibility can easily be re-built in order to have Melina and Eve as face challengers.
4) Move ahead with unifying the titles, thus removing the talent depth/repetitive feuds issues they're having with two belts.

With option 4, if Mickie becomes unified champion, McCool's return can be to challenge her given that she never got a shot at being unified champion due to her injury.

[The Genesis of KoOS]

Mickie unifies both titles, turns heel, then joins SRS Show and starts coming out in suits.

[Kae]

Reunifying the belts would be an odd move given how recent the divas title is. More to the point, it wouldn't actually solve the problem of the talent depth/repetitive feuds. You'd still have divas on both Smackdown and RAW; one of them just wouldn't have a belt, which would lead to a lack of focus in the division again.

You're right that it all depends on how serious the injury is. If it's a tweak, I wouldn't worry about it. If it's going to take a few months, I'd have a tournament, put the belt on Melina, and let Natalya chase. I might also move across Beth Phoenix and bring Serena Deeb up from FCW, since she's a natural babyface and was in OVW long enough to know the WWE style. That would make for a solid division.

[parder]

Aug 1, 2009 8:07:15 GMT -5 Kae said:

Reunifying the belts would be an odd move given how recent the divas title is. More to the point, it wouldn't actually solve the problem of the talent depth/repetitive feuds. You'd still have divas on both Smackdown and RAW; one of them just wouldn't have a belt, which would lead to a lack of focus in the division again.

With the unified title idea I would have it similar to the unified tag titles where the champion can appear on any brand. The brand loyalty of the divas would be fairly nominal, as they could all compete to be number 1 contender. I'd also slim down the title picture to just the well trained wrestlers, and have the rest as mainly valets. Of course it would also help if they came up with storylines and characters other than just to do with title feuds, but that's probably asking too much isn't it?

[Deleted]

Aug 1, 2009 8:05:01 GMT -5 The Genesis of KoOS said:

Mickie unifies both titles, turns heel, then joins SRS Show and starts coming out in suits.

Not much of a Mickie fan, but I would mark for this...especially if she would periodically reinforce what Jericho said during promos.


Jericho: "That's why all you parasitic drones are complete failures."

Mickie: "Failures!"

[Deleted]

Aug 1, 2009 8:22:34 GMT -5 parder said:

Aug 1, 2009 8:07:15 GMT -5 Kae said:

Reunifying the belts would be an odd move given how recent the divas title is. More to the point, it wouldn't actually solve the problem of the talent depth/repetitive feuds. You'd still have divas on both Smackdown and RAW; one of them just wouldn't have a belt, which would lead to a lack of focus in the division again.

With the unified title idea I would have it similar to the unified tag titles where the champion can appear on any brand. The brand loyalty of the divas would be fairly nominal, as they could all compete to be number 1 contender. I'd also slim down the title picture to just the well trained wrestlers, and have the rest as mainly valets. Of course it would also help if they came up with storylines and characters other than just to do with title feuds, but that's probably asking too much isn't it?

The difference is that there's not very many tag teams, which makes it rather easy to focus the unified tag belts on the champs and one challenging team at once. There's a rather high number of divas as it is, so if you had but one champion, there'd be more women chasing that one title than there are challengers for any other championship. I actually like the idea of having two separate women's champions because of that; they can now sustain two entire divisions.

That's where the issue of feasibility comes into play. If their division was composed entirely of well-trained wrestlers, they would have a much smaller division, but most of their women who get relegated from wrestling to managing really wouldn't be very good as valets, not to mention that there would be an overflow of them to that position. There's really no way that I can see WWE ever doing that, either.