Last night’s Raw saw the WWE Divas take a little bit of a backstage as our favorite female authority figure stepped up.
Stephanie McMahon gave Roman Reigns a piece of her mind as Ric Flair got involved in the Divas match and grabbed a piece of the action.
Steph is first up, and she serves some venom on a plate to Roman Reigns, following his vicious but never well-deserved attack on Triple H at TLC:
She enters the arena to a chorus of boos with a strut Bianca Del Rio would be jealous of. There’s my Diva Dirt audience research reference in the bag!
Stephanie tries to make herself sound like the rest of us but it doesn’t wash with me. You’re the Billion Dollar Princess, Steph. Thankfully, she shows her true colours, saying that if a vindictive, cold-hearted, ruthless woman is what people want, it’s what they are going to get.
Roman Reigns interrupts just as it appears Stephanie will fire him. She has a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp – she is livid! Roman gets a positive reaction much like he has for the past few months and Stephanie is fuming. Roman says that as a parent also, he is glad he whipped Triple H’s ass. Stephanie calls Roman a coward and lays the sarcasm on thick, like only she can.
Roman does the classic “retaliate with the same insult you just got insulted with” by calling Stephanie a disgrace, but he goes up another level, branding the entire McMahon family the same too. Poor Linda. Oh no wait, I’ve remembered her senate campaigns. She is a disgrace.
Steph hits back literally with eight massive bitch slaps to the face, and I am living for this. Stephanie says that she isn’t going to fire Roman, but someone is on his way to the arena who might… VINCENT KENNEDY MCMAHON!
Next up, Lana continues to physically make an impact in Rusev‘s matches, this time distracting the referee to allow him and Alberto Del Rio to win the tag team match:
One thing I love about the new Lana is her willingness to now actually get involved. She’s going up in the managerial stakes for me, despite not getting too much mic time.
Summer Rae is next in the spotlight, yet as usual, WWE don’t have her doing much:
And Tyler loses again. Yay.
Finally, it is time for our sole Divas match of the night. Team Bella members Alicia and Brie will square off against Becky Lynch and Charlotte, who are accompanied by Ric Flair. And there is not a Paige in sight. Many fans will be happy about that but I am fuming. Boo you WWE!
I am not upset however at Team B.A.D.’s Naomi, Sasha and Tamina being at ringside to watch the match. Shame WWE didn’t give them more to do but at least they appeared on TV. More than we can say for Paige!
Charlotte and Brie lock up to start the bout and Brie gets the best of the exchange at first. Charlotte bursts back with a neckbreaker but Brie trips Charlotte from the second rope, sending Charlotte head first into the top turnbuckle. She literally just performed that spot a few weeks ago did Charlotte, so it is a shame they couldn’t have done something slightly different.
Team B.A.D. mock Charlotte as Brie stomps all over her. Brie wraps around Charlotte waistlock sleeper style, and then knocks the wind out of her sails further with a bulldog and “Shades of Her Husband”. Brie works over Charlotte’s back again for a short while before Charlotte hits back with some lackluster kicks.
Despite both being fresh, Becky gets the best of Alicia off of the hot tag, taking her down with clotheslines and a jumping calf kick. Becky continues to pummel Foxy with a running forearm and a springboard kick before disposing of her with an T-Bone suplex. Brie breaks up the pinfall, but Charlotte spears her out of the ring to stop her from interfering again. Sidenote: I absolute hate Charlotte’s roar she does after a spear. So annoying.
Charlotte doesn’t mind people from her side of the ring getting involved though as Ric Flair trips Alicia Fox up. Neither Becky nor the referee see Ric’s trickery, and Becky makes Alicia tap to the Dis-Arm-Her.
Thoughts: It looks like we’re building to Becky vs. Charlotte and I am so pleased about that. Becky is in my opinion the strongest in-ring worker of the three NXT graduates and hopefully this story will showcase some more of her quirky personality too. At least her major presence on screen two weeks ago now make more sense.
What with Team B.A.D. at ringside, could the next title defense for Charlotte be a Triple Threat? Or could we see Becky face a member of Team B.A.D. to become #1 contender? Both of those would be nice to see. I just wish however that Team B.A.D. had done a little more at ringside to give more reasoning as to why they were there. After what we saw, they had as much reason to be out there as Cameron or something, so I would have appreciated more substance to their ringside antics. Couldn’t they have stared Charlotte down or something? Regardless, I am glad they are still on the radar.
What will SmackDown bring? Becky getting a win over Tamina perhaps? Building Becky up whilst finding out who from Team B.A.D. is strong enough to challenge for the belt would be a secondary path to go down whilst Charlotte is still cheating and Becky is still getting sick of it. One thing is for certain though, I don’t think Becky will put up with it much longer.
