Rachel Evers vs Marti Belle
At the start of the match Marti plays up her scrappy character by avoiding Rachel and holding her off. She taunts Rachel’s inexperience throughout the match while commentary plays up Rachel’s power and talks about her legendary father, Paul Ellering.
Highlights include a beautiful twisting leg drop from the corner by Rachel, a modified spine buster by Rachel, a fisherman buster by Rachel, and a front face Russian Leg Sweep by Marti.
Rachel surprises Marti by rolling her up for the win.
Rachel says her match is a tribute to the women who have come before her and she wants to inspire other women like her to go for their dreams.
Thoughts: This match was probably the weakest one in the tournament this far. I expected more from Marti, however, I really don’t want to trash her abilities. Instead I think she’s much more suited at character acting and can definitely tell a story in the ring but she needs a more experienced partner to dance with. She was very choreographed/slow when it came to pulling off some of her moves, which is unfortunate.
Rachel is still a newbie on her own and she needed a much more experienced veteran to play off of here also. A surprise upset was definitely the way to go. I could see they were trying to protect Marti this way. Rachel already won me over during her short matches with other NXT Superstars when she was a local talent. It’s interesting to me that commentary focused so much on her strength. She’s still very green and needs to develop a deeper character because when I think of brute power, Jazzy Gabret comes to mind, and what an amazing beautiful monster she is. I was also surprised they referenced Rachel’s father which is something they’ve been avoiding up until this point.
I do think Rachel’s on the right track and her promo showed that she’s here because she’s been inspired by the past and wants to do right by the future. That could be something she continues to hone in on to create a down to earth baby face that the audience can see themselves in.
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