Remember that time when I said that I was done with my "Women Of..." series on this guest blog? I LIED.
In all truth, this blog was meant to be something completely different but with time constraints (i.e. me gallivanting about for NXT, doing Christmas stuff and just general arsing around) I didn't get round to doing it. Card subject to change 'n' that. SO, since I had the pleasure of watching the NXT women at both the Glasgow and London shows, I thought I'd do a general wee thing about them and how bloody good they are.
Let's face it; from looking at past events, NXT are absolutely spanking the main roster at everything. Storyline, character development, the wrestlers and the matches they put on... it's just brilliant. Every minute detail of the show is cleverly thought out and the delivery of the product just blows everything else about the WWE out of the water. There's no fannying about with 20 minute promos at the start of every show, no ridiculous storylines and an hour of the show isn't made up of ridiculous adverts. Everything about NXT just works.
Something that ring announcer Greg Hamilton said at the Takeover show last week before they started recording really got me. It was the tiniest, most daft little thing but it got me buzzing more than anything that's happened on Raw in the past 6 months. When I write this you'll be thinking "what the fuck is all the fuss about ya daft cow?" but bear with me. He said, "the Superstars and women of NXT are backstage and they can't wait to come out and show you guys a good time", or something along those lines. See that though? The WOMEN of NXT. Not Divas. Women. They don't want to produce what the main roster are... they don't want Divas. They want a new breed of female wrestler and they're doing a brilliant job at it, and they're making sure that we know that they're different. That's my take on it anyway, but it got me giddy.
Of course, it doesn't matter what you call them. NXT Women, WWE Divas, it's all irrelevant. They could be called the Lassies of NXT, the Pink Glittery Mammary Glands of WWE... IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT THEY'RE CALLED. What matters is that the storylines they're put into and their delivery of it; their performance. Their heart, their soul, their rock 'n' roll. Their passion. Their charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. Their... ach, I digress. The point is, recently called up wrestlers aside, the NXT women have been outperforming the main roster ladies for a good long time.
One of them in particular has stood out, more so than ever over the past year. The world's best and most enthusiastic hugger, the woman who has more hairbands than actual strands of hair (and that's a lot of lovely, silky hair)... The darling of NXT and our current NXT Women's Champion, Bayley.
Bayley's come a long way from her humble beginnings in NXT in 2012; her development as a character has been outstanding to watch, a true underdog who fought tooth and nail to get to the top. She started out as a fangirl who doted on the other wrestlers then from there she constantly relied on the friendships she formed with other bigger, stronger, more confident people to get by. She started by aligning with Alicia Fox and Aksana, then after Charlotte started picking on her she moved on from person to person in an attempt to get away from her and that's basically been the story between them ever since. Their feud has been crucial to both of their careers and it never got boring; it allowed Bayley to move on from being the little girl she was at the start to being the woman and Women's Champion that she is today and it gave Charlotte's character a lot more depth. At first glance it just seemed like Charlotte was a bully, merely picking on Bayley because she was young and fearful and well, because she could. Charlotte was the Regina George of NXT and Bayley was a dweeb who ate her lunch in toilet cubicles and wore socks with sandals.
As the feud moved along, it became more apparent that Charlotte wanted Bayley to become better, more confident and less scared. She pushed her and kept pushing her until Bayley eventually started biting back. She saw something in Bayley, a great contender in the battle for the title... and in the end she was right. Bayley went from hardship to hardship, with her injured knee and her friends constantly picking on her and eventually turning on her, and in the end it was all worth it when she defeated Sasha Banks to win the title. Not only that, but she beat everyone who had ever given her any grief for not being "good enough" in the process. And she's been continuously getting better ever since; unlike most champions who usually plateau after a certain amount of time, Bayley has done nothing but improve. She and Sasha Banks were the first women to ever compete in an Iron Man match, not only in NXT history but in WWE history.
The best thing about it though, is that Bayley has stayed true to who she was all along: a positive, cuddle-daft, wacky-inflatable-arm-flailing-tube-man-loving cutie pie with a heart of gold. Not once has she sacrificed her goodness to get to the top, and that's why everyone loves her above everything else.
What is currently lacking though, is a serious contender for her title. We've seen her defend against Alexa Bliss, Eva Marie and Nia Jaxx so far... but nothing has been good enough to stick. Her last title defence was against Nia Jaxx at Takeover in London and despite Bayley doing well in it, I doubt it's a feud that will last much longer. I've no doubt that she'll have that belt for a good while yet but at the same time, we want to see a decent feud come out of it too. The two people I had in mind were Emma or Asuka but they're both currently kicking lumps out of each other so who knows what's next for the champion. It would’ve been nice to see her feud against her old pal Becky Lynch but she’s been banished to the confines of the main roster.
All I know is that 2015 has been an outstanding year for wrestling, especially for NXT. They've grown from being developmental, the "feeder school" for WWE, to their own strong brand who are about to conquer the globe. I can't wait to see what happens next for them.
So with the continuation of part one of this series of blogs I've decided that in part two I'm going to skip past a generation of fantastic ladies and plow on straight to the Attitude era. I'll be doing more on the lovely ladies of the 80s and 90s on my own blog but for this guest series I've decided to cut it short so that it doesn't get boring or dragged out for too long. There is so much great talent from this time period that it's just too much to cover in one blog.
In this blog I'll be looking at some of the biggest and most successful ladies in wrestling. I'll be starting with a personal favourite of mine.
So let's disregard all of the controversy - and there's a lot of it - surrounding Chyna. Forget her current plea to get into the Hall of Fame and her infamous film career. Let's talk about Chyna, the living embodiment of an Amazonian warrior; the She-Hulk incarnate. Chyna achieved a huge amount in her career with the WWE: she is a two-time Intercontinental champion (and is the only woman to ever hold the IC belt), she is a former WWF Women's champion and she was the first woman to ever participate in a King of the Ring or Royal Rumble match. She was also at one point the number one contender for the WWF Championship when she beat Undertaker and Triple H in a triple threat match but sadly lost it to Mankind shortly after.
Chyna was a game-changer because she broke the mould of your traditional women's wrestler: she didn't look like all the others, who were athletic but nowhere near as jacked as she was. She proved that women can be muscular and still be feminine, still be beautiful. She didn't act the way that most women do in the ring either; there was no hair-pulling or screaming like a banshee. If she was in the ring then she was going to bulldoze you and hit you with a low-blow no matter what was between your legs. Her feuds with the likes of Jeff Jarrett and Chris Jericho prove that mixed gender matches work and it's a shame that they didn't continue on with them because there are current Divas that could easily take on some of the guys on the current roster.
It's hard to believe that she was only signed for 4 years with the WWF. She achieved so much in that time and in my opinion she is more than deserving of a spot in the Hall of Fame. I highly doubt she'll ever be in it after all the mayhem that occurred just before and well after her departure but she definitely is deserving of a place.
Lita is another favourite of mine, again for how she broke the mould and dared to be different. She wasn't prissy, she wasn't a model; she was this bad ass punk chick with tattoos and her knickers hanging out. As a kid that was always a little bit "different", that was so cool to watch and comforting to know that it was ok to go against the grain. Everyone had a favourite wrestler as a kid and I guarantee it was always one that stood out and gave a big "fuck you" to the norm at the time.
Lita's greatest time in the WWE was probably her time spent with Matt and Jeff Hardy as part of Team Xtreme. She was part of one of many of their infamous TLC matches (and was the first woman to ever do so) and her part in Team Xtreme lead to her long feud with Trish Stratus that lasted from June 2000 right up until Stratus retired in 2006. After Lita pinned Stratus in what was Stratus's last ever match she began feuding with Stephanie McMahon and ended up winning the WWE Women's Championship for the first time.
There was a lot of Lita's career in the WWE that really didn't sit well with me though. She was a brilliant wrestler who brought the Mexican-style wrestling into the ring that wasn't commonly seen in women back in those days but a lot of the time she was booked in romantic storylines involving one (or two, as it were) men. Matt Hardy, Edge, Jericho, Kane... It was all so unnecessary. She was a good wrestler and she proved that time again in her feud with Stratus, she didn't need to be involved in daft stories like the one with Kane.
Despite the ridiculousness of some of the stories she was involved in, she went on to become a four-time WWE Women's Champion; she lost the belt to Mickie James in her retirement match at Survivor Series 2006. Again, it's hard to believe that she was only with the WWE for 6 years given the impact that she has made. She was deservedly inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014 by, of course, Trish Stratus.
And that leads me on to the next part.
Trish Stratus
Of course, I couldn't write about Lita and leave out Trish Stratus. Trish is a legend in her own right for what she managed to achieve in her career at WWF (and then WWE): she's a seven time WWE Women's Champion (the most reigns with this title that the WWE has seen in it's history), a one-time Hardcore Champion and she was named "Diva of the Decade" on the 10th anniversary episode of RAW. That's a great deal considering that she had no previous experience in wrestling before coming to the WWE - before she joined she was a fitness model. Fans nowadays always complain about Divas being signed when they have no previous experience but they forget that's exactly the same background that Stratus came from so it's just a case of waiting it out to see how good these women really are.
Albeit at first, Stratus was used mostly for her appearance but as she got better in the ring she was given a lot more opportunities such as her aforementioned feud with Lita. It took her a while but she eventually got the opportunity to wrestle after being involved in that ridiculous storyline with her having an affair with Vince whilst Linda was in a coma. She feuded for the belt with people like Jazz, Molly Holly, Victoria and Mickie James, who was the last person to ever win the belt from Stratus. After that Stratus won the belt from Lita in her last match in her hometown of Toronto (by using the Sharpshooter, might I add), she retired as the champion in 2006.
She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013 by Stephanie McMahon. Again, for only having been with the WWE for 6 years she achieved an incredible amount. She proved that you can achieve anything if you put in enough hard work and dedication, no matter how much or how little experience you may have.
And there we have it, three women of the WWE who all were a little bit different than the norm of wrestling at that time and yet still managed to rise to the top. Of course, women like Molly Holly, Gail Kim and Mickie James all done great things in that era too but as I mentioned at the start, there's just not enough hours in the day to write about them all (or for you to read about them all!). Next time I'll be taking a look at the more current WWE Divas who shouldn't be overlooked or underestimated.
Check out Lily's other work....WebsiteTwitter
Next week - The 2nd edition of Running the Ropes with Marc P! (Check out Part 1 here)
