Now that Charlotte is holding the WWE Divas Championship, she has targets coming at her left, right and centre. Whilst she also has a few allies, she has more enemies, some of which whom were teaming with her last night. The beholder of the butterfly belt has had a tumultuous start to her title reign, and even The Miz has been thrown in – yay! *sarcasm*
Last night on Raw, we saw Charlotte and Becky Lynch guest on Miz TV, a verbal clash that ultimately led to a physical one between a briefly reunited Team PCB and Team Bella in six-Diva tag team action. Throw in a pinch of Natalya, a dash of Summer Rae and a light helping of Stephanie McMahon and that sounds like the recipe for the type of cake that I am into!
The latter lady mentioned above is in the spotlight first alongside Triple H, Kane, Seth Rollins and a woman from WWE’s PR department called Ashley. Steph says that Ashley is at Raw to evaluate Kane’s position as Director of Operations following an anonymous complaint. Kane is his bipolar self that we have come to expect from recent weeks and this was a pretty funny segment. Whether it is dancing to The New Day‘s music or being involved in segments like this, it is cool to see The Authority take part in more light-hearted scenes like this one.
Miz TV is next and The Miz in his ridiculous clothes introduces Charlotte and Becky Lynch to a nice reaction. Michael Cole says that Charlotte has been able to celebrate her title win because of all the recent shenanigans. Are we forgetting her, Paige and Becky were apparently going out on the town with Ric Flair after Night of Champions? I guess we are!
Miz thanks C and B for coming along considering the last time they were on the show, Team Bella left them lying. Becky remembers it as Miz nearly getting his veil slapped off because he was “a sexist, misogynistic jackass”! Love that Becky is leading the promo! Miz that his headwear is in fact an infinity scarf (is his one of Layla‘s hand-me-downs?) and he says he wants to know more about the beef between P and CB. Charlotte says because of Paige’s outburst last week, she’s calling the shots and “this is how this gonna go”. She says Paige can either come out and talk it out, or she can come out and Charlotte and her will throw down.
It appears that Team Bella instead want to choose Charlotte’s Option A because Alicia, Brie and Nikki comes down with a mic in-hand each after Becky disposes of Miz’s and ends his pointless existence for this week.
Nikki says that Team Bella want to thank Charlotte and Becky for allowing their team to fall into disarray. Nikki thinks that the dissention within PCB will lead to her recapturing the Divas Championship. She acknowledges that Paige was right in saying that title reigns do end – even record setting ones – but Nikki’s superiority means that Charlotte’s reign will end way quicker than hers. Brie then throws a chair over like a total badass (that’s the reckless abandon of Brie Mode for you!) as Nikki bring up a point Paige made that she didn’t agree with. Paige didn’t start the Divas Revolution, she did!
Charlotte says that both Nikki and Paige are totally wrong. None of the Divas single-handedly started the Revolution, they all did it by believing in each other that they could perform just as captivatingly as the male superstars. Charlotte says that it was also the fans’ support and belief that started it too. This was so great.
Foxy then chimes in, telling Charlotte and Becky that they are outnumbered in their current situation. Becky brings more sarcasm that I really enjoy, telling Alicia that now she has mastered counting, they’ll move onto teaching her to read tomorrow, yet only after a good old-fashioned lass kicking!
Paige interrupts this potential scrap (damn you WWE for not playing her theme) stating the actually, she did start the revolution. Charlotte and Becky wouldn’t be on TV without her, NXT wouldn’t be on the map if it wasn’t for her NXT Women’s Championship win, Charlotte wouldn’t be champion and Becky, well, people still wouldn’t remember her name. Zinger!
Nikki shuts Paige up, telling PCB that their relationship is petty and a mess. “Why do you need enemies when you have friends like these?” Paige counters with one hell of a comeback: “Well with boyfriends like yours, who really needs ambition!” *SPITS OUT DRINK*
All hell breaks loose with PCB clearing house, uniting over a common enemy. They have to unite more so next as Kane puts them in a six Diva tag team match.
Paige and Foxy are in the ring to start things out and Paige introduces Alicia’s face to her knee around 34 times over. After a kick to the face, Paige tags in Becky who hits two leg drops. Charlotte tags herself in and drops a knee on Alicia for a two count. Alicia then reverses a neckbreaker attempt from Charlotte and she scoots out the ring after tagging Brie.
Brie immediately gets the best of the champ, working over her arm. Charlotte reverses into a schoolgirl before applying a lock of her own to Brie’s arm. Becky is then tagged back into the mix, and her and Charlotte (or was it Brie?) botch a double hip toss. They perfectly hit a tandem elbow drop though followed by a duo nip-up. It isn’t long before Becky is in trouble though and it was nothing to do with showboating like that either! Nikki distracts the referee, leading to Alicia grabbing Becky’s hair and ramming her to the mat.
Brie has the momentum firmly with her now and she celebrates that fact with a series of quick blasts to Becky’s back. Nikki enters the fray and hits a snap suplex. She continues to target the back further by hitting an arm-trap front slam that hits both the arm and back. Byron Saxton begins to call Paige out on her hypocrisy (but who cares, she is Paige and can do and say whatever she wants) as Nikki hits successive shoulder thrusts.
Alicia is back in the match next and she hits a normal suplex, a rarity for her moveset! She still managed to hit it in a completely different style to other people though and that’s what I love about her. She is such an amazing worker and her work is very individual. I am less impressed with Alicia’s rest hold yet Becky’s selling definitely made it better than it could have been.
Brie reenters the squared circle, hitting the third suplex in a row that has followed being tagged in. This teamwork and unity is great to see from Team Bella; they are such a cohesive unit. Brie moves away from Becky’s back, instead kicking her stomach silly and then dropping Bex on her face with a bulldog. Brie then goes back to working over Lynch’s back, this time with a seated reverse chinlock.
Nikki is tagged back in now and her and Brie hit a double team combination that lead to Becky flat on her back again. Another double happens shortly after as both Becky and Nikki clothesline each other at the same time. Becky manages to then tag in Charlotte and Paige looks irate!
Champion and challenger square off and Charlotte unloads with a shoulder tackle and consecutive chopping action. Charlotte switches up her usual moves of doom, hitting a big boot after her spinning neckbreaker. Little things like that make everything that little bit fresher for someone who over-analyses like me. All team members then rush into the ring when Team Bella break up the pin and hell breaks loose.
In the process, Nikki reverses Charlotte’s Figure 8 attempt, pushing her into Paige! Paige is fuming and decides she has had enough and she strops off. On her way out of the arena, Natalya shows up, saying that she is going to take Paige’s place. Apparently Nattie makes all of the rules up around here LMAO. That’s not how it works Tal! Before Natalya can get herself DQd, Paige yanks her off the apron leaving Becky seething. Whilst all of the drama is happening outside the ring, Nikki hits a distracted Charlotte with the Rack Attack for the emphatic win!
Finally, check out Summer Rae, who accompanies Rusev to the ring. Like last week’s Raw, there is not a lot of story direction here between her, Dolph and Rusev. They are back to the clichéd ‘I hate you, you hate me’ story WWE rinses and repeats when they cannot write decent plot pieces. Boo you bookers! It is isn’t just about the in-ring content; we need a reason for this feud to continue and right now, we don’t have one!
Thoughts: Charlotte’s promo was a breath of fresh air last night. With the likes of Paige and Nikki Bella spouting about starting the Divas Revolution and Becky bringing the sarcastic comedy, Charlotte’s dialogue made her standout as a woman proud to be a female athlete and proud to recognise the efforts of not only herself and her friends, yet also those whom she may not see eye-to-eye with. Nikki Bella tried to be the Diva all about respect, yet obviously it doesn’t work as a heel character, and Nikki preaching similar values was only to veil her egomania. I really enjoyed this moment for Charlotte.
I also have to applaud WWE’s booking of Becky Lynch. I said last week I didn’t want Becky to be an afterthought who just stood there and did nothing. Despite Paige’s claims that Becky is irrelevant, she is far from it. She led both of the mic exchanges with The Miz and Team Bella and genuinely made me chuckle.
The main laughs were from Paige though. Her line about Daniel Bryan and John Cena was the most brutal of the night, and in my opinion the most successful reference to their relationships with The Bellas since AJ Lee‘s “talent is not sexually transmitted”.
What is funny about all of the dialogue is that whilst the fans had a hand in the Divas Revolution’s genesis no doubt, it was Stephanie McMahon who started the revolution in the storyline. Nikki’s cocky nature leads her to believe so, and Paige’s bratty behaviour leads her to think the same, yet everyone seems to be forgetting the woman who made the three call-ups that rocked the division. Stephanie bringing that up sometime soon and tooting her own horn would be fun (perhaps when announcing the Hell in a Cell title match?
I also loved Natalya’s involvement yet again. She really is the dark horse and trump card in this storyline. I am very eager to see which direction her character takes. Will she be used as a way to put Paige over following the bazillion losses to Sasha or will she put Paige in her place? Will she officially join up with Charlotte and Becky or will she challenge Charlotte? Nattie is so unpredictable right now and that is perfect for reinserting her character into the Division.
As for the match, it wasn’t as long as what we have been used to, yet I’m glad we saw that. Becky had gotten worn down for quite a while, yet it didn’t feel too long in that it got boring. At least not to me. We did see three rest holds get utilized and that is more than enough with me so thank god there were no more and that one was quite short.
What I did absolutely love was the ending to the match. It was edge-of-your-seat stuff; Paige walking out, Natalya appearing, Nattie jumping to the apron, Paige pulling her off, Becky arguing with Paige, Charlotte getting distracted, Nikki hitting the Rack Attack and Becky getting taken out by Brie. All of those components led to a really exciting finish.
The Divas are really unpredictable at the minute and I am glad I have no clue what is next. Whilst Paige is on the receiving end of some spotlight, she hasn’t been winning matches and isn’t a rightful contender at all. Natalya is in a similar position too. If they do get chances at the title, will that cause an uprising from Team B.A.D? I hope so. Michael Cole did reference them on commentary, and they did beat Team Bella on Main Event last week, so perhaps those are subtle ways of WWE keeping them in some form of spotlight. Like Becky, I just hope they aren’t completely forgotten. Naomi has grown tired of being overlooked before, and now that she is paired with the only NXT graduate not to be pinned or made to submit, you can bet they won’t stay quiet for long.
So much promise, so much potential. Let’s hope WWE deliver. They are booking plenty of girls quite well at the moment, so let’s hope they keep it up.
