A WWE Hall of Famer has praised Gail Kim and Awesome Kong as “the beginning of serious women’s wrestling.”
In the late 2000s, TNA introduced the Knockouts division where the company started to feature the female talent in prominent positions.
At the forefront of the division were Gail Kim and Awesome Kong, who became the first women to headline an episode of IMPACT’s weekly television show.
During a recent episode of the “My World” podcast, current AEW star and TNA co-founder Jeff Jarrett discussed TNA/IMPACT Wrestling developing the successful Knockouts division and the importance of Gail Kim and Awesome Kong’s feud. He said:
“Gail [Kim] was with me and America’s Most Wanted when there was no Knockouts division,”
“And so her personal journey, because she was with WWE and basically given nothing. Maybe you’ll call it the Divas era, the bra and panties [era]. There just wasn’t any kind of wrestling.”
“And when I look back now, I am super grateful and appreciative, but I really look at the context of what was put together in the era of cable television. TNA was the first.”
Jarrett continued to explain on how they constructed the Knockouts division around the one central feud, saying:
“The Knockouts division, 8 [to] 10 ladies that all had different personalities and put together. And it was new, and by design, less is more.”
“The stories were simplistic. The characters were easy to understand.”
“We started, and this is something that I think is — I wouldn’t say a lost art — no matter how you slice and dice it, we all kind of get so caught up in eight stories on one show and six stories on another and all this.”
“We really started with one story: Gail and [Awesome] Kong. Now, we added talent to build the division out, but the main story was Gail and Kong. And yes, Gail being the babyface. It was so easy to understand.”
Jeff Jarrett is currently working on-screen and behind the scenes for All Elite Wrestling where he is currently aligned with Jay Lethal, Satnam Singh and Sonjay Dutt.
Transcription via Wrestling Inc.
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