Talia Madison, Angel Williams, ODB and Amazing Kong
In September 2007, TNA announced that it would finally see the birth of a new women’s division as their programming increased to 2 hours. Over the course of the year, Gail Kim, Traci Brooks, Christy Hemme, Roxxi LaVeaux and Jackie Moore were given the occasional match here and there, but were mainly booked as valets/managers.
Later that month, TNA announced that it would be holding a 10 women gauntlet match at their annual Bound For Glory event… so who would those other 5 women be?
A TNA text alert was sent a couple days later, telling subscribers that ‘Amazon Kong’ had signed to TNA who had been working in Japan… this would later turn out to be the 6th woman in the match and the ‘Awesome Kong’ we now hold synonymous with the TNA Knockouts Division.
As for the other 4 women? Well 3 of them were revealed to watch Amazon Kong’s (who would then be called ‘Amazing Kong’) debut match against Gail Kim on October 11th 2007, the penultimate episode of iMPACT before Bound For Glory. Without much hype, the other women would enter the ring first – but it was who was revealed that remained unexpected.
Talia Madison, Angel Williams and ODB each made their way down to the ring to watch the match. Madison was probably the ‘most’ expected, as she had been working in North East Wrestling with Christy Hemme, but she had been very vocal about wanting to work with WWE for months prior. Williams had been released from her WWE developmental contract just months before, details of why have still never surfaced, but she had started working back in Mexico’s AAA and seemed to be done with wrestling in the States. Least expected was ODB, who was still working shows and a popular face in WWE’s developmental ground OVW in the hopes of a WWE contract, so for her to be plucked by the ‘competition’ was a pleasant shock.
Talia Madison became ‘Velvet Sky’, Angel Williams became ‘Angelina Love’ and ODB continued to develop her gimmick that she formed in OVW. Each of these women would become multiple time Knockout Champions, but it’s weird to think that they all started out as lumberjills!
Who else made an unexpected debut? Click to see who else made the Fast 5!
