Hello good wrestling fans. I come to you with devastating news this week. After attempting to watch Extreme Rules yesterday — as I am wont to do using my brother-in-law’s account — I was given an error message upon trying to stream the pay-per-view, telling me that I needed a subscription to continue.
The heartbreak was real, friends, for me and my wallet. WWE figured out the madness behind people sharing streaming accounts. I was forced to subscribe to the network using my own email and payment information. I am recovering, but my innocence has truly been lost. Thanks, WWE. I hope you’re proud of what you’ve done.
In all seriousness, while it is annoying I now have to pay for a subscription, I can’t deny that it will pay for itself in time, or that I won’t use it. Plus, I have a feeling that sometime in the future, WWE will move away from PPV altogether, and the future will lie with the network and streaming.
Anyways, let’s crack on with the nylons and the midriffs. As usual, I’ll divide things between TV programs and the pay-per-view.
The Good
Photo cred: WWE.com
RAW and SD Live: Sadly I don’t have much for this section this week, but I will take time to comment on the matches between Ember Moon and Liv Morgan. Despite the fact that this pairing was likely thrown together willy nilly, the two put on solid matches on two separate RAW shows. I like that these two were given exposure on pretty dense shows, and both women looked good. Even if Liv lost both matches, to me, she looked strong in defeat, and Ember got to keep her momentum still being fresh to the main roster. For Liv in particular, it was good that she was given the spotlight to show off her wrestling skills, as backup members of any faction can easily be forgotten as legitimate threats between the ropes as well as outside of them. Nicely done.
Extreme Rules: None. Absolutely none.
The Bad
RAW and SD Live: Here’s the thing: the weeks leading up to Extreme Rules were just plain bad for the women’s division. The buildup to both women’s title matches sucked, and other women’s segments were either pointless or nonexistent. And so much of what we did see was confusing with a lot of plot holes.
On the RAW side, we have the ongoing saga of Alexa Bliss and Nia Jax, with Natalya and Ronda Rousey as odd third and fourth wheels. I have so many questions:
- As mentioned in previous posts, why is Nia a face now when she was acting very heelish only a month or so ago? Is it because they’re both on Total Divas?
- Why are Nia and Natalya friends? Is it just because RAW is short stacked for face women to put in tag matches?
- Why is Nia being positioned simply as a placeholder for Ronda?
The mystery of Ronda is intriguing, but it becomes apparent every week in her absence that WWE just cannot write logical women’s segments or storylines. And that’s sad because 95% of their women’s roster is, you know, not Ronda Rousey.
And don’t even get me started on the Smackdown women’s division. James Ellsworth and Carmella are almost unwatchable to me at this point with how badly they are written and how sloppily both performers execute the material they are given. And poor Asuka…
Extreme Rules: …who deserves so much more than what she gets week in and week out. She continually is made to look like an imbecile by people who are cartoonish heels at this point. That match with Carmella was awful and you will not convince me otherwise. The booking, the pace, the execution, all of it. It’s matches like that that caused fans three years ago to cry out #GiveDivasAChance. How soon WWE forgets.
I don’t really have anything to say about the RAW women’s title match. I was indifferent to it, but I will say that it was predictable as all get out, especially since we’ve seen the face/heel dynamic between Alexa and Nia so much already at this point. The Ronda interference was fun, but I think it was poorly placed. She should have come out after Alexa’s win to assert herself as her new challenger. Interfering during the match itself felt trigger happy. It would have been more satisfactory if Alexa ate the punishment at the end rather than Mickie in the middle of the match.
The Thorny
RAW and SD Live: And we’re back to the Tale of the Never-Ending Feud between Sasha Banks and Bayley. I can’t believe I, along with other fansm really thought WWE had gotten it together a few weeks ago with that Bayley “heel turn.” There’s first the issue that Bayley was told by General Manager Kurt Angle that she needed to go to counseling to keep her job, on the very same RAW that Braun Strowman turned over Kevin Owens’ car and laughed about it. Not only was this the wrong move to make storyline-wise — because segments like these typically only work if they are comedy acts — but it also was very gendered.
We do not threaten men’s jobs because they can’t get along with their cohorts. The fact that these women are being asked to essentially perform emotional labor to resolve their issues screams sexism. Men aren’t put in these kinds of segments, and if they are (a la, Team Hell No), we are supposed to laugh at it. And to top it all off, nothing even came of it!
This feud exposes a glaring problem in WWE’s women’s division. It once again proves that WWE is incapable of creating worthwhile storylines between women that don’t involve the title. Here we have two insanely talented Superstars that, lest we not forget, had Match of the Year in NXT and Pro Wrestling Illustrated in 2015 because of their NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn title match, the first time for either that a women’s match had achieved that feat. If any two women could carry a feud without a title, it would be these two.
But WWE is wasting them, because to focus on more than two feuds at one time in the women’s division is too difficult. We are able to create slow-burning non-title feuds with the men. Four matches at Extreme Rules were men’s non-title matches. Why, why can’t we do this for the women?
Extreme Rules: I don’t have anything yet, but only time will tell if the results will have long-standing implications.
***
That’s it, folks. Now we build to SummerSlam, and I’m hoping some marquee matches start to show themselves soon, because the division sorely needs it.
Stay legit bossy,
AC