As WrestleMania 42 approaches we find ourselves in a situation eerily similar to last year. Roman Reigns and CM Punk are set to face each other in one of the main events….and there’s a women’s title match that wandered off the kayfabe trail and into the real world, sparking some takes and think pieces about everything except the match itself. What started as some harmless tweeting between Jade Cargill and Rhea Ripley became a fourth wall breaking fiasco where several of their coworkers saw a green light to chime in unprompted and led to some conveniently timed ‘reports’ surfacing about Cargill’s backstage relationship, or lack thereof, with several of her them. So now instead of being asked to root for or against Jade and Rhea, a week was spent talking about Jade Cargill the woman and Demi Bennett (Rhea’s real name), with the most spirited conversation being about whether Cargill the woman has become good enough at her job to deserve the spot she’s in, and whether or not Cargill the character should lose this match as a result.
Why do we end up here so often with women’s matches and feuds? Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch, Lynch and Ronda Rousey, Alexa Bliss and Sasha Banks, Britt Baker and Thunderosa, Flair and Tiffany Stratton, and now Cargill and Ripley. Instead of the match and the characters we are talking about the women and how well they get along at work with each other and with their other coworkers and if they deserve to be in the spot they’re in. And as was the case in the previous instances a lot of us take sides based on which of the two we prefer, accepting the narratives that support their side of the arguments along the way. Why do they (and us) keep losing the plot like this? There are lots of reasons and lots of blame to go around. The bookers should bear a lot of it but so should us fans and the women themselves. There are a lot of competing forces at work here and they all drag down the experience for everyone involved.
Was it a work?
No. It started out as one, absolutely. But when these things go left it’s because somebody always strikes in a way that illuminates some real life issue and then it gets very real. These things happen too often and are too sloppily muddled through to be some planned out work. No creative team in their right minds would craft this many storylines that leave their audience scratching their heads, and make the people involved look unlikeable and unprofessional to some section of their customers. If these things have all been planned then that means the creative teams in multiple promotions are just dumb about how to book storylines for women’s feuds and big matches. But, as we learn more and more about the people who run things in this world it becomes more apparent that the answer to ‘are they really that dumb?’ is often a big fat YES.
I don’t think in these cases that they’re dumb, just extremely negligent. The women’s divisions in pro wrestling often get creative scraps that lead to the most basic of promo segments and angles, which leaves them to go to social media to try and add something to it, which can lead to bad things happening. And when real underlying at work tensions get added to the pot then we get what we have here. Now I will blame the wrestlers for one thing: it’s been long enough that if you want better from creative, which they all say that they do, then some group of them need to do a collective ‘this ain’t gonna work for us, brother’ until some improvements are made, and we don’t have more and more instances where real life issues are being injected into the kayfabe storylines. Despite what people tell you on the internet real life personal issues do not usually make more money.
Ok, so why are we here AGAIN?
This year has the same problem that Charlotte and Tiffany had last year: no foundation. In both cases neither match pairing had any history to lean on. Ripley and Jade never occupied the same space during Jade’s first two years in WWE. They’ve never been in the same match together, never had a promo with each other, nothing. Yes, ‘they’re both big stars’ can sometimes be reason enough to book a match. But for WrestleMania, in a marquee match, nine times out of ten there needs to be at least some recent history to work with because we’re talking anywhere from six to ten weeks to build the biggest matches. Starting a feud from scratch between two people for a big WrestleMania match with six weeks to go is a recipe for something cold at best and disastrous at worst. Even if the execution is bad, shared history can at least add some energy to it and make it palatable. Without any then you either get a pedestrian creative effort that doesn’t generate any big interest or get what we got here, a haphazard attempt to create something out of nothing where things can and often do go off the rails.
This is part of a bigger critique I have of how HHH books the division, that there is little in the way of continuous long term story building. The big name veterans and promising up and comers are often kept away from each other for weeks, months, or even years and then then it’s time for WrestleMania and he has to make a matchup of big names, the result is either one between two women with little to no on camera history together (Becky and Rhea at 40, Charlotte and Tiffany at 41 and both matchups this year) or where the combatants have little to no interaction before the match (both matchups heading into 39, Rhea and Becky again from 40). And then the match itself is often a one off, with blowing any chance to craft a longer, bigger story. WrestleMania world title matches should be landmark points in big feuds – either the first match, final match, or a big match in between. Contrast that with the men’s world title matches during his tenure, all of which were either had a predecessor match or a rematch afterwards to make a bigger story. But back to the matter at hand. The lack of chemistry between Jade and Rhea is glaring here, and makes this whole thing look like it was slapped together at the last minute because Bianca wasn’t able to come back – which of course it was.
There was a more logical path that could have been taken. Jade does have some recent history with Tiffany and never gave her a rematch after beating her for the title. Rhea and Iyo were tag team champions until the night before Elimination Chamber. Even if they’d still lost the belts to Nia and Lash they could have booked the four way extravaganza between those two teams, Charlotte and Alexa Bliss and the Bellas, and then had Jade and Tiffany do their rematch at WrestleMania. Yes, that would have put the tag team titles in a more buzzworthy match and bigger spot than one of the world titles. But it’s not like we didn’t have two WrestleManias in a row where tag team matches main evented night 1, and the Women’s World Title has already been moved to opening one night of the show in each of the past two years. If nothing else there is some existing story material going on that could possibly make for better television and a more interest in the conclusion.
Can this be turned into something that feels like a good and proper feud with a few weeks left? Yes. If you want to get some real heat on Jade there’s a real easy way to do it – have Jade and her crew of Michin and B Fab head over to RAW and lay out Rhea’s friend and tag partner Iyo. And I mean like the Rock did Cody going into WrestleMania 40. Then you’ll have a storyline beef that isn’t concocted out of thin air and presented in tortuous fashion every week with hostage video quality promos that come off like neither one of them wants to be out there at all. But the biggest concern I have is for what comes after Mania. If this ends up being a one off, then will some groundwork finally be laid so that at next year’s show there are more existing stories to either pay off or add to in some kind of way at WrestleMania? Or will we be back here next year wondering why the segments for __ vs ___ are feeling weird and contrived again, or who’s at fault for things going off the rails yet again? It’s up to you, HHH.
Stroke of Genius 