With the men’s Royal Rumble’s surprise number 30 entrant and the shaping up of the women’s Elimination Chamber match to crown the first ever (modern era) WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions, I thought I give my thoughts to what is happening with the division right now.
Could New Title Be Gateway to Allow Crossover with NXT?
So far, three teams will compete inside the Elimination Chamber to crown the new champions, three from RAW and three from Smackdown. With the Riott Squad and Nia Jax/Tamina already secured in their spots, it’s pretty obvious that Bayley and Sasha Banks will be the final RAW team going in, since WWE has been showcasing them as a tag team for months now, even though they’re scheduled to face Alicia Fox and Nikki Kross to earn that final spot in the Chamber.
Smackdown Live is being filled by Mandy Rose/Sonya Deville and the Iconics, with the final spot to be determined. The Blue brand’s women’s division seems a bit sparse, but I think Naomi will be in there with a partner (probably Carmella). But who knows? Naomi could end up with someone completely unanticipated.
This brings me to the point earlier raised: could these new tag team belts be a gateway to allow crossover with NXT’s women’s roster? We saw at the Royal Rumble five NXT female superstars enter the 30 women match, so WWE is inclined in some areas to allow NXT performers onto more main roster events.
Io Shirai and Kairi Saine have been performing as a tag team recently (dubbed “The Sky Pirates” on a recent NXT taping) and Shayna Baszler’s running buddies Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafer are a tag team as well. If you’re going to allow these new titles to cross over between both of the main roster’s brands, why not extend that to NXT as well?
Nia Jax as Intercontinental Champion?
Considering what happened at the men’s Royal Rumble and her subsequent interactions with Dean Ambrose, Nia as the IC title holder isn’t that far off.
I find it somewhat laughable at the shock on commentary when she entered that match, then eating a superkick from Dolph Ziggler, a 619 from Rey Mysterio followed by an RKO from Randy Orton. Maybe it’s because I’ve watched a lot of Lucha Underground these past couple of years where men wrestling women was more commonplace that sanitized me to that level of interaction between the genders in the ring.
But I’m an old enough fan of the product to remember when the late Chyna (who started out as Triple H’s bodyguard) went on to compete against men like Jeff Jarrett and Chris Jericho and even held the Intercontinental Championship at one point, and yes this was literally 20 years ago.
However, Chyna was a once in a lifetime kind of performer in those days (in all honesty, most women wrestlers past and present probably aren’t even on her level)…except maybe Nia. I actually could legitimately believe she can pull off a decent match with a male wrestler…although I’m not so sure it should be with Dean Ambrose given what happened on last week’s RAW.
Most likely the Intercontinental title is as far as WWE would be willing to go in terms of putting a female wrestler into the men’s division, even if it was going to be on a temporary basis. But it seems to be that there is a chance for them to actually pull this off, and Nia Jax is the woman to do it.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
Recent Comments