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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Apr 4, 2024 3:43:52 GMT -5
With Becky having finally won the big one at Mania and (kayfabe) overcame the company preferred stars, after that what she needed was a strong counterweight to her tough confidence that could take her to the limit. Someone like a 2003 Victoria as the psychotic heel throwing her off her game. or a monstrous 2007 Awesome Kong far beyond anything Lynch had ever faced would have been the kind of strong heels that still allowed Lynch to be an underdog even as champion. Instead, we got proper lady Lacey Evans in nice hats as her main opposition for the next four months. I think having a brief feud as a bit of a "victory lap" would be okay, like she doesn't necessarily need the most credible opponents for the first one or two defenses in that situation, but they really did build basically no one to that spot, and even if Lacey sort of worked as a foil from a character standpoint, they did nothing to prepare her for that kind of a spot, either in the ring or out of it. There were only a handful of people with the credibility to plausibly beat her, and she had already beaten two of them at 'Mania. Like, I'm looking at the roster of the time, and it's not really much there in terms of readymade credible opponents. Alexa Bliss had credibility (in that "she got a strong push against our will so I buy her beating Lynch" kind of way), but she'd also had a bunch of concussions so she was in and out in terms being cleared or not. Nia Jax had credibility and heat from the accidental punch, but she also had two bad knees that she was about to go get fixed and recover from for the next 12 months. Sasha Banks had credibility and probably would get you the best matches, but she'd just taken leave for whatever that whole situation was after she and Bayley dropped the tag titles. Bayley could've been an option but babyface v babyface is always a hard sell. Going to back to Asuka could've worked, but the vocal stans would go out of their way to make it not work unless Asuka won. They just called up Kairi Sane, but throwing her straight into a losing title feud wouldn't be fair to her. Maybe turning Ember Moon in a pinch could've helped. She wasn't going anywhere fast as a babyface, and apparently her best work is done as a heel looking at current-day AEW. Otherwise any other option was either old hat (Natalya, Alicia Fox), not ready (Dana Brooke, Lacey Evans) or a bunch of people Lynch had already beaten like a drum over the previous few months (The IIconics, Riott Squad, Mandy Rose, Sonya Deville).
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BorneAgain
Fry's dog Seymour
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Post by BorneAgain on Apr 4, 2024 5:13:12 GMT -5
If you couldn't get a credible opponent the other alternative was to have a heel so annoying and such a pain that the build was less "can Becky beat her" and more "I can't wait to see Lynch beat this woman's ass".
Lacey's presentation was that she was sort of the uncanny valley in that way, an irritant but not a severe one; a pseudo threat, but not a major one.
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Post by Mid-Carder on Apr 4, 2024 5:33:30 GMT -5
Why not do Becky/Ronda at Mania, like everybody wanted, then do Becky/Charlotte again after Mania?
The only reason can be they wanted Charlotte in the Mania main event, and I'm a big fan of Charlotte's but her inclusion took away from the story.
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Post by EoE: Well There's Your Problem on Apr 4, 2024 5:57:59 GMT -5
Why not do Becky/Ronda at Mania, like everybody wanted, then do Becky/Charlotte again after Mania? The only reason can be they wanted Charlotte in the Mania main event, and I'm a big fan of Charlotte's but her inclusion took away from the story. To quote the book, Lynch suspects that they’d already promised Flair the WM main event against Rousey at some point before Lynch caught fire and they felt obliged to follow through on that. That or the much suggested “Rousey’s leaving so let’s give two people the WM main eventer rub instead of just one”.
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Post by theironyuppie on Apr 4, 2024 8:00:09 GMT -5
Why not do Becky/Ronda at Mania, like everybody wanted, then do Becky/Charlotte again after Mania? The only reason can be they wanted Charlotte in the Mania main event, and I'm a big fan of Charlotte's but her inclusion took away from the story. To quote the book, Lynch suspects that they’d already promised Flair the WM main event against Rousey at some point before Lynch caught fire and they felt obliged to follow through on that. That or the much suggested “Rousey’s leaving so let’s give two people the WM main eventer rub instead of just one”. Becky also quotes a friend excitedly texting her soon after WM 34 about how Charlotte/Ronda could be next year's main-event. It's a forgotten part of the story that speculation and rumour started for that match so soon after WM 34. Becky's rise and the circumstances around it made her the focal point of the main event in the end, but there's a good chance women main-eventing WM 35 would have still happened even without it.
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