WWE: In Praise of AJ, the World's Most Interesting Diva

I was all set to write a review of the third season of NXT (you know, the one with the Divas) when I realized three things:

1)      The most memorable thing about that season was CM Punk’s epic night of commentary, the one where he proved that he was pretty much fantastic at every aspect of his job and how, as we went on to see, WWE pretty much had to do something with him.

2)      Despite the overall quality of the wrestling and promos on NXT Season 3 being downright terrible, it has produced the largest number of performers who are already on the main roster in some capacity.

3)      Of those performers, though, there is only one lady worth writing an entire article about.

So, now we come to the focus of point No. 3, currently one of the most compelling characters in WWE right now (and definitely the most interesting Diva): Jamie Keyes.

Kidding.  I’m talking about AJ, but I figure that you already knew that given the subject matter.

AJ did finish a close third in Season 3 (and it’s not like Naomi and Kaitlyn have been buried on house shows or anything) and was thrown into The Chickbusters tag team with Season 3 winner Kaitlyn from the get go.

AJ was also the one on whom Natalya turned heel to form the Divas of Doom (which seemed awesome at the time but turned into a colossal bust).

After the dissolution of The Chickbusters,  initially because Kaitlyn turned on her on Smackdown, but this footage was left out for some reason,  AJ took on the manager gig with Daniel Bryan. Ho hum.

How typical, how cookie-cutter: cute babyface Diva in a storyline romance with rising babyface underdog and championship contender. Boring, right?

Then AJ got run over by Big Show.

The boring-ness of AJ and Daniel Bryan stopped dead in its tracks as soon as AJ got knocked loopy by Show: Bryan turned into a charismatic, grating underdog/bully (Yes!) who blamed other people for his problems.

All the while, AJ hung on desperately to Bryan, despite him treating her like crap, hoping that he’d come around.

It was not an original storyline; Bryan-AJ was a modern revision to the Savage-Elizabeth partnership back in the day (Randy Savage being one of better historical comparisons for Daniel Bryan, though Savage was significantly more charismatic).

However, AJ and Liz were different: Liz mostly just kept holding on as Savage kept putting her down, but AJ went a different direction.

After Bryan cut things off with AJ after she “cost” him the World Title at WrestleMania, something inside AJ snapped. She started violently attacking her friends and fellow face Divas. She awkwardly hung around Bryan in a Mickie James-esque way.

But here’s the part that makes her the most interesting Diva on the roster (except for maybe the hopefully-returning-soon Kharma): despite going full-on crazy, AJ never turned heel.

She instead started trying to sabotage Bryan, including siding with fellow anti-hero CM Punk to try and thwart his title aspirations.

To my knowledge, never have we seen a crazy, unstable, stalkerish Diva as a babyface. We’ve seen plenty in heel roles, like the aforementioned Mickie James, Victoria (who dropped the crazy side once she turned face)...but never have the fans been served a big old can of Crazy B***h Tonic and cheered.

The unstable, crazy babyface is a rare commodity; few males have been able to pull it off and get over (Randy Orton has done an excellent job, Stone Cold straddled this line quite a lot, Kane did OK with it), but as far as I can tell we’ve never seen a woman pull off the good/nuts dichotomy in WWE.

Until now, that is.

Given that AJ’s gimmick is over, she has good promo and in-ring skills for such a new talent, and that I can see her continuing to be a thorn in the side of Bryan (as a side note, how awesome would CM Punk, crazy babyface AJ, and a face-turned Daniel Bryan be as a stable?) I wouldn’t be surprised if WWE were to start building the Divas division around her.

Let’s face it: AJ is cute, talented, and has a fresh and interesting gimmick. She has everything WWE likes (the appearance) and what the IWC likes (talent, the anti-hero persona).

What with her continued development, the eventual return of Kharma, and the presence of ladies like Beth Phoenix, Layla, and Tamina on the roster, I could actually see a rapidly approaching Diva Renaissance in WWE.

We haven’t seen a strong Divas division since the days of Trish, Victoria, Molly Holly and Lita.

Are we there now?