Gail Kim As Women's Champion In 2003 Or Paige As Divas Champion In 2014? Who Had The Better Debut Reign?

Women’s wrestling in world wrestling entertainment. Believe it or not, it has been around for quite some time but it hasn’t been taken to the stratosphere by the powers that be until a few years ago. However, in one fateful time between 2002 and 2005, there was a small women’s division that although wasn’t as big as it is today, it was surprisingly competitive for the most part. 

Meet Gail Kim. Before Gail joined WWE in October 2002, She started training at Ron Hutchison's wrestling school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada which had some notable alumni like Edge, Christian, Beth Phoenix, Tiger Ali Singh, Traci Brooks, Trish Stratus among others. 

Gail Kim made her professional wrestling debut in late 2000 and she donned the persona of a masked luchadoras by the name of "La Felina" and wrestled all over the Southern Ontario area. 

Kim started off her WWE career training in OVW and was called up to the main roster in 2003 (more specifically Monday Night RAW) after working on house shows and dark matches until her debut RAW match in a battle royal for the WWE women's title supporting a Matrix-inspired gimmick. 

Fast forward to 2014. The black and yellow brand known as NXT transitioned from an awful reality contest show into a legit third brand that in most cases is better than the main roster. What makes NXT unique from RAW and Smackdown is how they utilized their female performers. 

While the big two shows have a bad track record of shorting matches for the then called "divas", NXT had longer, solid women's wrestling matches and one of those women that was part of that competitive roster was Paige.

Look, if you have watched Fighting With My Family then you'll have an understanding of Paige's origins even though it's more or less behind a true story you know like most movie biopics. 

However, to simplify it for you guys, Paige or Britani Knight made her pro wrestling debut in her family's wrestling promotion called "World Association Of Wrestling" and wrestled all over Europe even in the US down to her signing with WWE in 2011. 

She was in FCW which then later rebooted as NXT and had an undefeated streak after huge crowd support in late 2012 which led to her winning the first-ever NXT Women's Championship tournament beating Emma in the finals. Eventually, Paige had her main roster debut on the RAW after Wrestlemania as the NXT women's champion. 

Now that I'm done describing their beginnings, let's answer one simple question. Which one of the title reigns was better? Gail Kim as women's champion in 2003 or Paige as divas champion in 2014? I'm going to analyze those championship reigns in 2 different categories. How they won it and the title run itself. Let the games of subjectivity warfare begin. 

How They Won It? 

As I mentioned earlier, the women's championship match took place in a battle royal while Paige's match was for the divas’ championship in one on one action against the second-longest reigning divas champion history AJ Lee. 

Battle royal matches have the trouble of showcasing everybody and Kim was a great example of that. 

The only highlight in this 7-minute encounter was Victoria and at one point during the match, it looked like she'll lead herself to a victorious win (see what I did there?). However, she was unexpectedly eliminated by the Asian Canadian with a hurricanrana and captured her first and only WWE women's championship. 

Paige though was a different story. AJ Lee in a promo before this match, stated that the "divas" division had 294 days to prove the champ wrong but they couldn't and also talked about overcoming the odds referring to her title match against every member of that division the previous night aka Wrestlemania 30. 

Out came Paige and she congratulated AJ Lee on her Wrestlemania 30 win, however, AJ slapped the newcomer and Lee challenged the first-ever NXT women's champion to a match for the Divas championship. 

Paige catches AJ and delivers the Paige turner to win the Divas Championship for the very first time. The women's championship match and the Divas Championship match both have a common. And that's both matches were so short but for two completely different reasons. 

One was short for a battle royal match while the other was short for a singles match. This was tough to rank but given that Paige won the title with a huge pop from the fans and it took place on the RAW after Wrestlemania, I'll give the edge to Paige. 

The Championship Run Itself. 

Also known as the most interesting part of this piece, Gail Kim's reign as women's champion that lasted over a month maintaining a 1-1 record that excludes tag matches and house shows matches according to Wrestling Data (Paige and Gail Kim). 

It's interesting to point out that she defended her title in triple threat matches that included Trish Stratus, Ivory, Molly Holly and Victoria in various house shows which looking back, would have benefited as televised encounters. 

Kim successfully defeated Holly on RAW for the women's championship but lost the title by Holly a mere 2 weeks later on the red brand in good old fashioned 50/50 booking. 

However, the youngest reigning divas champion of all time had more diverse opponents to face thanks to her 2-month championship run with a 15-1-3. She then lost it to the same opponent she won the championship from and that's AJ Lee. 

Paige had a lot more wrestlers to work with and yes, those wrestlers were not Trish Stratus level but at least it's better than facing one person. A W for Paige it is. 

I guess Paige is the winner of the best debut that is awarded from a site with 20 visitors per week so yay!? Anywho, this article was supposed to be published in May of last year but two things caught in the way. Laziness and laziness (technically, it is two things). 

Sound off in the comments on who had the better debut reign? Paige Or Gail Kim? Follow me on twitter @omartheplayaguy and stay safe smarks.