Jade and Lotus 
Jade and Lotus
STATUS: Faces. Tag team, the "Asian Invasion."
WRESTLING: Jade and Lotus are regarded as two of WOW's best "sellers". They are definitely willing to show pain. On offense (a relatively rare occurrence), they spend a lot of time in the air. I think they both do headscissors; I know Jade does, anyway. Sometimes it looks cool, sometimes...it doesn't. They have some other aerial moves that look ok and have potential.
CHARACTER: I don't think either of them has been on the mic. They both have cheesy entrance videos which are what you would expect (as I recall, doing martial arts moves, meditating, some crap like that.) Lotus is the most frequent poster on the WOW message board, by a long sight. Gotta love that.
LOOKS: They're both very good-looking. Even though Lotus looks great in a bikini, I personally prefer Jade. Lotus' face is a little too angular for me. They both have quite the body.
COMMENTS: The Asian Invasion is very effective at gaining fan sympathy and getting the heels over. For some reason, it just seems worse when two little Asian girls are getting the crap kicked out of them than it would if they were some other ethnicity. (There's a sociology paper in that.) That makes them more effective than the other ethnic jobbers. There is one other thing that separates the AI: They represent somewhere with a rich wrestling history. Yeah, I'm sure there is wrestling in Hawaii, Iran, and wherever the hell Paradise is supposed to be from. But those places don't have a wrestling style that Americans would recognize as being distinctive. The Far East does.
What I'm trying to say is that there are actually reasons to have "Asian" representation in WOW, and, there is the possibility of depth to "Asian" characters. Since unlike the other stereotypes, there is a reason to emphasize their ethnicity, they should go with it. I could be wrong, but despite the entrance videos, I don't think either of them actually know martial arts. If they do, they don't wrestle like it. They should learn martial arts and kick out some Japanese wrestler moves. It would not only make their characters cooler, it would make it a little more plausible for them to actually win a match. They are both tiny women, so it's hard to buy that they would be able to overpower opponents. Fancy moves would even the scales (after all, everyone knows a small guy who knows karate can kick anyone's ass, right??)
UPDATES:
2/4/01 (PPV):
- The AI got beat by Boom Boom and Caliente.
Damn, WOW really doesn't have much faith in them, do they?
2/11/01 (show #19):
- Jade got beat by Poison, but they are making a big
deal out of "Jade's grandmother". As we all no doubt already knew
from the WOW website, "Jade is devoted to her grandmother and benefits
from her teachings." Maybe Jade's grandmother can "teach" her
some Asian-style moves like I have suggested here. There have also been rumors
about a breakup of the AI.
2/18/01 (show #20):
- Jade took the "dissatisfaction" angle to the WOW message board,
sulking about her record and complaining about WOW management. So apparently,
this is gonna be a real angle and not one of those red herrings. It'd be easy
for them to turn her heel using this angle, but I hope they don't go that route.
Anyway, you can't turn someone heel in WOW by having them complain about McLane.
3/4/01 (show #22):
- They lose again, more grandmother, more talk about Jade's unhappiness. Wake
me up when something happens with this. (BTW, we never actually saw the
grandmother in this ep. I guess they didn't come up with the angle until the
PPV, and were forced to work it rather awkwardly into this pre-PPV-taped episode.)