The Nitro Girls Tribute Page

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS IS A FAN RUN PAGE, NONE OF THE NITRO GIRLS HAVE ACCESS TO THE PAGE AND WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RESPOND TO ANY MESSAGES. I DO NOT KNOW ANY OF THE GIRLS PERSONALLY, BUT I AM PROUD TO SAY THAT KIMBERLY, CHAE, SPICE, AND CHIQUITA DO KNOW ABOUT THE PAGE AND DO APPROVE OF IT. SO IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT ON THE PAGE I'M SURE THEY WERE BE ABLE TO READ IT EVENTUALLY.Before bra and pantie matches, pudding matches, and before there was an Extreme Expose dance team WCW came up with one of the best ideas and money makers the company ever had. They would put together a female dance team to entertain the wrestling fans between matches much like cheerleaders at an NFL or NBA game. No one in wrestling ever thought of that before. Sure the WWF started making women out to be more powerful then in past with their pushes of Sunny and Sable. But WCW came up with a group of women that weren't just talented and gorgeous. They came from different backgrounds, different races, different personalities and any WCW fan at the time certainly had a favorite Nitro Girl. And I dare say that most of the Nitro Girls back then (Kimberly, Frye, and Chae in particular) were hotter than any WWE diva thats been around the past 10 years. They weren't wrestlers, they weren't supposed to be. They were gorgeous eye candy and talented dancers who would run circles around the beloved Extreme Expose today. Everyone on myspace has a bunch of Trish Stratus, Torrie Wilson, Mickie James, Melina, even Daffney and Major Gunn fansites. And amazingly and sad at the same time I haven't found one fan site for the most beautiful bunch of women to ever grace a wrestling show..the Nitro Girls! I mean they sold tons of posters, pictures, CD-ROMS containing sexy pics of them, their own book, hell they even got their own PPV which I'm sure profited very well going against the WWF Attitude era that it was competing against at the time. Well thats just not right. I understand there's tons of new wrestling fans who didn't follow WCW or ECW in the 90's and are force fed the WWE's side of what WCW and ECW were. And if you look at WWE's documentary on WCW in their DVD The Monday Night Wars all they talked about was what an asshole Bishoff was, the NWO, how they misused Austin, Beniot, Gurrero, how badly a legend like Flair was treated, how Goldberg wasn't ready for his push, etc. They never really showed the good parts of watching WCW Nitro such as the great cruiser weight action, the entertaining characters like Disco Inferno and Ernest Miller who are never mentioned because they have no alliance to WWE today. And with the exception of the quick 60 seconds on the rise the fall of WCW DVD, no one has said anything about the Nitro Girls almost as if it was they were useless in the WWE's eyes. Until of course a year ago when they ripped them off and came out with the 2nd rate version of the Nitro Girls known as Extreme Expose. Many fans probably don't realize that before Sharmell was King Booker's queen she was Nitro Girl Storm. Or that busty and gorgeous Nitro Girl Whisper is today the wife of Shawn Michaels. Or that before long legged Stacy Keibler went on to huge popularity in WWE and eventually pursuing a Hollywood career she won a contest to become the next Nitro Girl in 99 and became Skye. Obviously they had a great impact on how women are used in pro wrestling today. Could they wrestle like Ivory or Tori? No. Were they the generic big breasted blondes the WWF were using? No. They were each different and all of their routines and photo shoots were done in a classy way. Thats what made them so great to watch. They were without question the hottest female commodity in pro wrestling during the late 90's period.HISTORY OF THE NITRO GIRLS:The Nitro Girls were formed in 1997 by Kimberly Page at Eric Bischoff's request and made their debut on July 14 in Orlando, Florida. Their main focus was to entertain the live fans during the commercials of Monday Nitro and occasionally performed in short segments on the show. The Nitro Girls filmed their own pay-per-view that aired in 1999.The Nitro Girls also made appearances at WCW promotional events and were featured in the WCW produced film Ready to Rumble. As the group became more and more involved in storylines it slowly dissolved, but never officially broke up until 2001 when WCW was sold to Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation.Now for some personal input, it's well known that the true end of the Nitro Girls came the moment Vince Russo became head of creative in October 99. He would ultimately cause Fyre and AC Jazz to leave the company and never return, while taking Kimberly out of the group altogether to become an on screen character. He wanted the girls to be more involved in storylines, therefore they would actually have to wrestle in a match. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this wasn't gonna work. Now I don't know what kind of contract the girls were under, how much WCW was paying, etc. Could they have disputed that they were hired to work as dancers, not wrestlers in their contract or was WCW free to do whatever they wanted with them? Could they have said to Russo, "I'm a dancer not a wrestler dammit! It's in my contract you pay me to DANCE..not WRESTLE! So either use me as a dancer or let me sit at home and pay me until my contracts up!"? Was the money so good that the girls just did what they were told? Did some of the girls simply feel it was time to move on or felt they deserved a bigger role in the company? Was it all Russo's fault considering his superiors were down his back demanding him to cut costs in anyway possible after the financial mess Turner/Bishoff left? All of these questions it seems have no definite answer. But the bottom line was The Nitro Girls were one of the sure moneymakers the company had. Number one, I highly doubt they were making 5% of what someone like Kevin Nash was making at the time. They were affordable and they were extremely popular (popular enough to have their own PPV dammit!). Therefore they had to be one of the few things WCW actually made a "profit" with in the end. They could have done lingerie magazines, posed with the wrestlers in magazines, 3 PPV's a year in different locations (They created a buy rate with no other attraction with them dumbass..exclusive Nitro Girl PPV's every 3 months would have been brilliant), and of course danced in between matches like they did best. So for Russo to want to disband them business wise was the 2nd most moronic move ever, the 1st being Russo shooting on Hulk Hogan and saying people would rather pay to see Jeff Jarrett and Booker T..two of the dumbest moves in the history of pro wrestling barnone...DUMB!!