"Divas" Wrestling thread

riffmongous

Was there any explanation given for the Bellas turning face? Any character development at all?

A Brad Maddox Guy

Meh not a fan of Naomi at all to be honest but I do reckon she'll win in screwy fashion.

bobby_says_hi

I'd like for Nikki to narrowly retain the title on Sunday and then for Naomi to go ape**** on her. If she attacks Nikki brutally, that should help the sisters turn face

rovert

Liked the full podcast but Summer using industry speak was kind of cool/weird given her on screen character etc:

Bray Wyatt sounds like a nice guy.

Stereomaniac

So it looks like Naomi is going to continue feuding with both of The Bellas. I guess it makes sense if the Funkadactyls come back together, but maybe a name change is in order?

rovert

Eva keeps pumping out videos.

https://instagram.com/p/2CriCimzdP/

What Meltzer wrote in the Observer this week:

Eva Marie, who has been out of the ring due to surgery, has been doing one-on-one training with Brain Kendrick to prepare for her return. As noted last week, WWE has ideas that Eva Marie and Lana can be big stars, and apparently Lana is a very good athlete. She’s been in a manager role from the start so nobody knows how good she can be in the ring, and I’m not sure in the ring is what they mean by big star for either, but obviously Eva will be reintroduced soon as a wrestler. Kendrick said that he’s teaching her all styles, focusing on matches with Super Crazy and Tajiri from ECW (Super Crazy is one of Kendrick’s favorites because he was able to make it in the U.S., Mexico and Japan, as did Tajiri for that matter), old ECW tapes and All Japan women tapes. One person familiar with her training told us that he is about to get people to respect her.

Personally heard this morning that Eva Marie has mega heat in the WWE locker room. Never popular in the first place but there's been renewed negativity as Eva got a large increase in pay just to start training.

Also there's been no evidence she can string all these high spots in the videos together in a coherent match, chain wrestle etc.

Clemantis

I'd be skeptical about her being match-ready any time soon, she looked quite awkward hitting sliced bread no.2, still using a crash pad etc. Eva Marie actually looks perfect for a valet role, she wouldn't even need to be taught how to work a match.

On the Bellas, Nikki beating Naomi with interference from Brie seems really heelish. The characters are all just so inconsistent.

CastorTroy

Maybe it was asked before, but what's the point of Eva Marie?

Angron

I think the main "point" was she was brought in specifically for Total Divas. I don't watch the show, but maybe she's considered popular on it and they want to give her a shot in-ring to see if that popularity translates?

CastorTroy

I assumed that's the only reason she's there as well, but then also thought didn't they have enough women between the main roster and developmental to choose from. But maybe they wouldn't do it, I don't know

Stereomaniac

I watched a lot of Total Divas but kind of dropped off this year. Her storyline was somewhat interesting, I thought. I believe she initially went for a tryout but that could be fiction.

rovert

The Bellas are the new Young Bucks:

There has been reports of backstage heat between the current divas champion Nikki Bella and Booker T. This was said to have started when Vince told Booker to bury Nikki and shut her up on commentary on Monday Night Raw. This made Nikki furious and apparently complained backstage. Booker T, a baby-face announcer also put over the heel diva 'Naomi' as the "best diva" and was said to be sick of Nikki's attitude backstage.

- PWTorch

bobby_says_hi

From what I saw of Total Divas season 1, they had two new Divas Eva Marie and JoJo who were supposed to represent newcomers experiencing the lifestyle for the first time - to contrast them against the likes of the Bellas and Natalya who had been there for a while. Eva Marie does seem to be quite popular with Total Divas audiences, judging by her twitter and instagram followers

Cameron did a pretty good job on Smackdown I thought. She still needs work but she's clearly putting in effort to improve. She's already got plenty of heel charisma and could potentially become a top Diva if she continues to work hard

Bellas definitely going back face. I think it's for the best. Although Nikki can play both, Brie can only really be a face. Just a quick look at her match against Naomi on Raw and against Alicia Fox on Main Event confirms how better she is in that role. Nikki seems like she could be a good face too, since she didn't come across as particularly heelish in the program against AJ and Paige

Clemantis

Maybe in-ring the Bellas are better as faces, but they are very unlikable on the mic and in backstage interviews.


Thinking about the future, I'm finding it hard to get excited for Charlotte and Sasha's eventual call up given the current climate. The only matches given prominence involve the Bellas, which guarantees they won't be anything special. There will be the 'dream' matches with Paige, but Paige hasn't been doing great in-ring work since leaving NXT. The best they can hope for is matches against each other, but that didn't work out too well for Emma and Summer Rae.

briany

Having Lana dropping the Russian shtick would be a big mistake, IMO. Anyone noticed that the three biggest heat getting female characters of recent years have all been non-wrestling ones? Lana, Vicki Guerrero and Stephanie McMahon all got way more over than any active female wrestler of recent years, and I include AJ, the Bellas, Laycool and whatever else have you in that. If they do with Lana what they're planning to do, they heavily risk just losing her in the shuffle and just being another denizen of short, filler matches that WWE makes little effort to promote.

rovert

Sandra the seamstress
https://twitter.com/sgovintage/status/595780790547554304

Stereomaniac

https://twitter.com/StardustWWE/status/595872740684378112

bobby_says_hi

Gonna miss Ms Sandra from Total Divas. She always seemed like a bit of a mother to the girls. She also had some of the best one liners, the crowner being this to Eva:

"Miss Lucy is all over the shop" (Eva's shorts were too revealing)

Stereomaniac

Sometimes during Divas matches, I get hopeful that some of the characters from Total Divas will make an appearance. Even better than Sandra is Vinny, when he gets drunk and drives Cameron mental with his emotional talk. In fact, her father should have his own spin-off.

Clemantis

So, elsewhere on boards rovert posted a video of Charlotte vs Naomi, which showed just how weak Charlotte can be when not in scripted matches with people she is familiar with. I mentioned a while ago that Emma and Summer Rae put on a lovely short tv match, but neither work well with anyone other than each other. Paige has been better, but clearly her best matches took place before she got to RAW.

Is NXT the problem? Churning out workers who are excellent at what they do, but who struggle in the WWE format. Or is it the WWE format that needs to change so that the women are allowed have competitive matches that mean something and well-defined characters and storylines? Or is this a problem that will just go away by itself as the main roster gradually gets replaced by women who came up through NXT?

CastorTroy

May be due to them coming from a place where the women can wrestle to the main roster where some are clearly there for their looks. Would be the equivalent of putting me in the ring with Daniel Bryan. As good as he is, there's only so much he can do to carry a match.

Though familiarity can also be a factor.

But that's just my opinion

DM_7

Charlotte and her performance with Naomi is both her her and NXT. She is not experienced in any way outside NXT. It is a problem that people can look good there with time to prepare but throw them into a match without that opportunity and people without experience outside wwe training and it will show. She needs to be on live events for a long time before re debuting.

Paige and any issues on the main roster appear to be more down to how WWE book Divas. Even her debut she was beat around by AJ. If she was allowed to wrestle like she was in NXT she would naturally impress more.

Emma was never provided any platform to perform in a credible way, she debuted as a comedy figure and became a glorified enhancement talent after the shoplifting story.

A Brad Maddox Guy

Plus the main roster divas are all 2-Dimensional characters. There's no scope for a good feud to cover the cracks in a poor match when the feud has totaled about 15 minutes of TV over an entire month and consists of people who are presented as a complete afterthought 99% of the time.

My favourite main roster divas match in the last few years is AJ vs Kaitlyn (I wanna say it was at Payback?) because it felt like an actual feud worth seeing rather than the chance for a toilet break that many others are presented as.

rovert

Clemantis wrote: »

So, elsewhere on boards rovert posted a video of Charlotte vs Naomi, which showed just how weak Charlotte can be when not in scripted matches with people she is familiar with. I mentioned a while ago that Emma and Summer Rae put on a lovely short tv match, but neither work well with anyone other than each other. Paige has been better, but clearly her best matches took place before she got to RAW.

Is NXT the problem? Churning out workers who are excellent at what they do, but who struggle in the WWE format. Or is it the WWE format that needs to change so that the women are allowed have competitive matches that mean something and well-defined characters and storylines? Or is this a problem that will just go away by itself as the main roster gradually gets replaced by women who came up through NXT?

Wrestling is so dynamic and dependent on a whole bunch of factors. Always just saw Emma-Raw-Paige's chemistry coming form working together so much in developmental (FCW). Charlotte and Sasha is kind of a "so much" to "too much" difference. It is like they wrestle each other every day at the performance center. The spontaneity is gone AND for whatever reason neither don't change up the sequence of their spots. Like I said it comes across as rote learned instructions on how to do a much.

NXT is the problem as in that talent's growth is kind of stunted early on as NXT Live Events follow the formula of WWE Live Events in that talent works the same opponent three nights in a row with the body of the match being exactly the same. WWE's OLD developmental system was probably too old fashioned and not WWE for it's own good but you weren't considered graduated OVW male or female if you couldn't do a 60 minute match completely called in the ring. As that was a true test of you as a worker both in times of your match psychology and repertoire.

bobby_says_hi

Timing is also an issue as well. Even though the girls on the main roster get better time than they used to, live TV is still a hugely different ballgame. That's usually why the matches on Superstars etc tend to be better, since they're taped and it's easier to just edit them if they go a little bit over time. And with the C-shows, there's always filler with replays of what happened on Raw etc. But on live TV you have to meet your time so you can imagine that flusters a few of the greener ones

Also the likes of Paige, Emma and Summer would usually have only worked one or two matches per NXT taping - essentially wrestling for TV once a month. With bigger gaps between appearances, it makes them appear much fresher. I didn't realise how repetitive Paige and Emma's wrestling was until they were on Raw weekly

rovert

I knew he started on the road full time with WWE Wrestlemania weekend but had no idea he was replacing Sandra:



The guy wrestles as Mikaze. He is the guy covering his face here:

Sarath is a good dude and WWE hiring him is a sign of an "indie takeover" of WWE but he kind of gets no respect older fans saw his "mistakes" on New England indies and working low card ROH. While new fans and Sasha fans find out who he is and react with "Sasha is dating HIM!". He's on the left here:



Would be gas if he makes Total Divas before Sasha.

Ridley

Seamster.

rovert

Aaron is Mr. Bayley:

Stereomaniac

Is that a legitimate application or is he a shoe-in for the actual show proper when it comes on?

rovert

Sasha's fella is under the thumb: