AEW Women's Division Discussion

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Dec 31, 2020 16:57:13 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

I feel like Anna Jay is one day going to be the face of the division. For as little experience as she has she is damn good.

Conti also has the makings of being really good. She just has real crisp strikes and does real well incorporating her Ju-Jitsu style into her wrestling. She's also come such a long way from her NXT run too.

[Harry The Arrow was Wrong!]

It's honestly kind of crazy just how fast Tay started improving when she left the pc.

[chrom]

Anna has all the makings of a bona fide Ace

[Mr T L Wolf]

I'm liking Leva matches less and less, but mostly because they're just commercials for the Young Bucks books. We get it, and if we didn't, the three commercials per Dark for the book would remind us.

[Dub H]

Dec 31, 2020 18:28:33 GMT -5 Harry The Arrow was Wrong! said:

It's honestly kind of crazy just how fast Tay started improving when she left the pc.

It shows one method doesnt fit all.

She has such unique ring style,really makes her shine

[polarbearpete]

Dec 31, 2020 18:28:33 GMT -5 Harry The Arrow was Wrong! said:

It's honestly kind of crazy just how fast Tay started improving when she left the pc.

I thought Tay was actually pretty good in NXT. Watch some of her matches from the latter part of 2019. Was surprised she left/was cut.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Dec 31, 2020 18:36:35 GMT -5 Mr T L Wolf said:

I'm liking Leva matches less and less, but mostly because they're just commercials for the Young Bucks books. We get it, and if we didn't, the three commercials per Dark for the book would remind us.

I think Leva would be great backing up someone as well or maiking friends. I really liked the idea of her and Skyler being friends, they worked real well in their match together and showed good sportsmanship with each other. 

Leva's got good technician ability, she just doesn't have a true finisher and I think that hurts her, I like rollup variations being deadly but I'd like if she found a finisher to build around too.

[Mozenrath]

I don't mind the Leva book promotion stuff since it is kind of fun seeing how the enhancement women will react, be it accepting the book or attacking it. I also think it works due to the character, who'd just be trying to get people to read book props, anyway, may as well be this one.

I think I also am down for it just since Leva has a really fun theme song, so I enjoy her appearances.

As for last night, all four women did a good job. Jay and Tay are both really shining, and Britt was a fun heel, with Rosa looking fiery jumping her. Penelope is someone I am sometimes a little down on, but she sells great. I think my issue with Ford is that she's sometimes a little overexposed since she was one of the only heels they had any access to for a couple of months.

[El Cokehead del Knife Fight]

Dec 31, 2020 18:28:33 GMT -5 Harry The Arrow was Wrong! said:

It's honestly kind of crazy just how fast Tay started improving when she left the pc.

I honestly think that maybe the Performance Center is just not the amazing training facility that the WWE thinks it is, sure it's got great places for working out and rings but I kinda get the impression that they don't have trainees studying tapes of the greats.

[The Captain]

Dec 31, 2020 19:17:20 GMT -5 polarbearpete said:

Dec 31, 2020 18:28:33 GMT -5 Harry The Arrow was Wrong! said:

It's honestly kind of crazy just how fast Tay started improving when she left the pc.

I thought Tay was actually pretty good in NXT. Watch some of her matches from the latter part of 2019. Was surprised she left/was cut.

I thought Tay had a lot of raw talent in NXT and by the time she was released, it was starting to get refined. I remember hearing somewhere she wasn't happy in WWE either, and that likely affected some of her performances. But she's been great in AEW so far and I hope to see her as more of a mainstay in the division. She has a ton of chemistry with Anna Jay and even if she doesn't join the Dark Order officially, I think she's got a bright career ahead of her.

[thewaykokid]

Dec 31, 2020 18:28:33 GMT -5 Harry The Arrow was Wrong! said:

It's honestly kind of crazy just how fast Tay started improving when she left the pc.

I feel like the best people to come out of the pc already had a lot of experience.

[Dub H]

Dec 31, 2020 22:38:39 GMT -5 thewaykokid said:

Dec 31, 2020 18:28:33 GMT -5 Harry The Arrow was Wrong! said:

It's honestly kind of crazy just how fast Tay started improving when she left the pc.

I feel like the best people to come out of the pc already had a lot of experience.

IIRC the PC has ben critized for that.A lot of experienced guys just redoing stuffs they know like rolling.It feels like they need to come up with specialized training for different types of wrestlers.

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

On the topic of rating things as they stand as the year turns...

The year was frustrating, perhaps all the moreso because it seems like a corner was turned at the very last minute.

AEW's women's wrestling has been snakebitten since day one - 2019 saw Kylie Rae quit before she got going, Allie and Britt Baker suffer crises of confidence that killed their ring work, Awesome Kong and Brandi Rhodes utterly flop in their attempt at a major heel gimmick. Absolutely everything they tried to build around died on the vine except for Riho and Hikaru Shida, the former of whom wasn't really around as much as they needed her to be. 2020 brought the pandemic that gutted their top tier of Riho and Yuka Sakazaki, their reliable middle of Shanna, and a noteworthy guest in Shoko Nakajima, as well as canceling many planned visits (taking Kenny Omega at his word on that one). Kris Statlander going down to a torn ACL absolutely left them with a roster so effectively small as to be stifling.

But the effort was just not there with what they had.

There were a lot of questionable uses of the wrestlers available. They tried to get something out of Mel, Brandi, and Rebel in the ring, and it says a lot that Brandi is the one who got the most mileage out of that experimentation. For that matter, Rebel was used to pad out the Britt Baker/Big Swole feud, a spot that could just as easily have been given to a more exciting and competent younger wrestler who was being used at the time (like, say, Kenzie Paige) who could have had an actually decent match and carried momentum from it into something better. They brought in Ariane Andrew in what was probably an attempt to ride off Naomi's social media popularity, which didn't really go that well. Jade Cargill got an awkward-as-hell debut that put her in a position to be compared unfavorably to Jake the Snake, which is really not a good look on an obvious top prospect. Heather Monroe, Lil Swole, and Rachael Ellering were all brought in for two matches apiece, and for some reason none of them had a decent-length title match with Hikaru Shida even as Shida was completely adrift and lacking in opponents or anything at all to do as champion - a two-week program for each of them would have been a stronger use of everyone involved.

Speaking of Shida being adrift, the champion spent entirely too much of the year completely at a loss for anything to do. More egregious than that, though, is how her matches were presented. See, I can buy that Tony Khan and co were playing the long game with talent signings, that they wanted the Right People for their show and were holding out a few months until the Right People were available. But the booking and promoting of Shida as champion was atrocious for most of her reign. She issued an open challenge for the title, but then had non-title matches with Diamante and Heather Monroe - a plot hole that utterly confounded the commentary team, who had to spend the whole match talking around the fact that the title wasn't on the line despite the freaking open challenge that was placed on it. Nyla Rose and Vickie Guerrero would disappear for weeks on end, show up and demand a match with Shida, repeat, and then Shida just...accepted their demand with no conditions or anything, as if she just hadn't gotten around to it. Then, the breaking point seemed to be her match with Big Swole, a match that was completely ignored all night until the second it happened - no segment, no angle, not even a story to the match. This is not a good way to book a champion.

Fellow champion Serena Deeb showed up, lost, won, won a significant championship off-screen, came back, won a few times. At no point was she given a hint of a personality even as she had excellent matches. Not exactly a good look alongside Shida's treatment.

But then there's the positive note that the year ended on. The Big Swole/Hikaru Shida match was a nadir for effort in the division...and then the effort seemed to suddenly kick in right afterward. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the same time that Thunder Rosa came back. All of a sudden, Dark started to absolutely teem with interesting tryout talent like Allysin Kay, Lindsay Snow, Dreamgirl Ellie, Vertvixen, Elayna Black, Lady Frost, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and, just before the year ended (filming-wise), Ashley Vox. Red Velvet, KiLynn King, and Leyla Hirsch got modest pushes that have lined them up to fill out a good middle tier that will make the top tier of Shida, Baker, Nyla, Riho, Swole, and Deeb look better. Abadon and Anna Jay have gotten the kind of presentation and gentle booking touch that makes up for their weaknesses. The fact that Vox made it in even after news that Riho may be returning is also promising for the future, because it implies that they are actually looking to expand. Trainees KiLynn King and Dani Jordyn have ended the year as very exciting wrestlers who would deserve a push in the near future. Thunder Rosa looks to stick around.

There are still some uneasy parts, though. Leyla Hirsch, Ivelisse, Diamante, and Red Velvet have still not been added to the roster page despite showing up on the Heels website, which raises questions about whether they are sticking around for the long term. The amount of time dedicated to women's wrestling is still paltry - Cody walking to the ring gets more time than an angle that seven/eight women are wrapped up in, and the total of all women's segments still tops out at ten minutes on most shows (regardless of how many wrestlers are involved).

2021 could be the year that everything cracks open and gets going - an infusion of new talent like Ashley Vox, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and KiLynn King shaking up the scene on Dynamite; the critical mass of Riho, Baker, Deeb, Nyla, and Thunder Rosa all having the trust of management leading to more segments; the (fingers crossed) opening of international travel bringing back Yuka Sakazaki and Shoko Nakajima as well as whatever other joshi want to pop in, or perhaps opening a door for LuFisto; the wrapping up of existing bookings from the likes of Nicole Savoy and Hyan, or the increasing quality of work from newbies like Kenzie Paige and Elayna Black, providing AEW with a stronger pool to recruit from...

Or it could be a year that a lot of great talent continues to go to waste, because the talent was never as big a hurdle as the presentation and effort.

[markymark]

Leva wouldve better being Britts lackey than Rebel, like Rebel botched something that an 8 year couldve done last Wednesday on Dynamite

[chrom]

Jan 2, 2021 22:40:10 GMT -5 markymark said:

Leva wouldve better being Britts lackey than Rebel, like Rebel botched something that an 8 year couldve done last Wednesday on Dynamite

I honestly wonder why they bother keeping her. She's inept at everything they try to have her do

[markymark]

Jan 2, 2021 21:42:19 GMT -5 Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby said:

On the topic of rating things as they stand as the year turns...

The year was frustrating, perhaps all the moreso because it seems like a corner was turned at the very last minute.

AEW's women's wrestling has been snakebitten since day one - 2019 saw Kylie Rae quit before she got going, Allie and Britt Baker suffer crises of confidence that killed their ring work, Awesome Kong and Brandi Rhodes utterly flop in their attempt at a major heel gimmick. Absolutely everything they tried to build around died on the vine except for Riho and Hikaru Shida, the former of whom wasn't really around as much as they needed her to be. 2020 brought the pandemic that gutted their top tier of Riho and Yuka Sakazaki, their reliable middle of Shanna, and a noteworthy guest in Shoko Nakajima, as well as canceling many planned visits (taking Kenny Omega at his word on that one). Kris Statlander going down to a torn ACL absolutely left them with a roster so effectively small as to be stifling.

But the effort was just not there with what they had.

There were a lot of questionable uses of the wrestlers available. They tried to get something out of Mel, Brandi, and Rebel in the ring, and it says a lot that Brandi is the one who got the most mileage out of that experimentation. For that matter, Rebel was used to pad out the Britt Baker/Big Swole feud, a spot that could just as easily have been given to a more exciting and competent younger wrestler who was being used at the time (like, say, Kenzie Paige) who could have had an actually decent match and carried momentum from it into something better. They brought in Ariane Andrew in what was probably an attempt to ride off Naomi's social media popularity, which didn't really go that well. Jade Cargill got an awkward-as-hell debut that put her in a position to be compared unfavorably to Jake the Snake, which is really not a good look on an obvious top prospect. Heather Monroe, Lil Swole, and Rachael Ellering were all brought in for two matches apiece, and for some reason none of them had a decent-length title match with Hikaru Shida even as Shida was completely adrift and lacking in opponents or anything at all to do as champion - a two-week program for each of them would have been a stronger use of everyone involved.

Speaking of Shida being adrift, the champion spent entirely too much of the year completely at a loss for anything to do. More egregious than that, though, is how her matches were presented. See, I can buy that Tony Khan and co were playing the long game with talent signings, that they wanted the Right People for their show and were holding out a few months until the Right People were available. But the booking and promoting of Shida as champion was atrocious for most of her reign. She issued an open challenge for the title, but then had non-title matches with Diamante and Heather Monroe - a plot hole that utterly confounded the commentary team, who had to spend the whole match talking around the fact that the title wasn't on the line despite the freaking open challenge that was placed on it. Nyla Rose and Vickie Guerrero would disappear for weeks on end, show up and demand a match with Shida, repeat, and then Shida just...accepted their demand with no conditions or anything, as if she just hadn't gotten around to it. Then, the breaking point seemed to be her match with Big Swole, a match that was completely ignored all night until the second it happened - no segment, no angle, not even a story to the match. This is not a good way to book a champion.

Fellow champion Serena Deeb showed up, lost, won, won a significant championship off-screen, came back, won a few times. At no point was she given a hint of a personality even as she had excellent matches. Not exactly a good look alongside Shida's treatment.

But then there's the positive note that the year ended on. The Big Swole/Hikaru Shida match was a nadir for effort in the division...and then the effort seemed to suddenly kick in right afterward. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the same time that Thunder Rosa came back. All of a sudden, Dark started to absolutely teem with interesting tryout talent like Allysin Kay, Lindsay Snow, Dreamgirl Ellie, Vertvixen, Elayna Black, Lady Frost, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and, just before the year ended (filming-wise), Ashley Vox. Red Velvet, KiLynn King, and Leyla Hirsch got modest pushes that have lined them up to fill out a good middle tier that will make the top tier of Shida, Baker, Nyla, Riho, Swole, and Deeb look better. Abadon and Anna Jay have gotten the kind of presentation and gentle booking touch that makes up for their weaknesses. The fact that Vox made it in even after news that Riho may be returning is also promising for the future, because it implies that they are actually looking to expand. Trainees KiLynn King and Dani Jordyn have ended the year as very exciting wrestlers who would deserve a push in the near future. Thunder Rosa looks to stick around.

There are still some uneasy parts, though. Leyla Hirsch, Ivelisse, Diamante, and Red Velvet have still not been added to the roster page despite showing up on the Heels website, which raises questions about whether they are sticking around for the long term. The amount of time dedicated to women's wrestling is still paltry - Cody walking to the ring gets more time than an angle that seven/eight women are wrapped up in, and the total of all women's segments still tops out at ten minutes on most shows (regardless of how many wrestlers are involved).

2021 could be the year that everything cracks open and gets going - an infusion of new talent like Ashley Vox, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and KiLynn King shaking up the scene on Dynamite; the critical mass of Riho, Baker, Deeb, Nyla, and Thunder Rosa all having the trust of management leading to more segments; the (fingers crossed) opening of international travel bringing back Yuka Sakazaki and Shoko Nakajima as well as whatever other joshi want to pop in, or perhaps opening a door for LuFisto; the wrapping up of existing bookings from the likes of Nicole Savoy and Hyan, or the increasing quality of work from newbies like Kenzie Paige and Elayna Black, providing AEW with a stronger pool to recruit from...

Or it could be a year that a lot of great talent continues to go to waste, because the talent was never as big a hurdle as the presentation and effort.

I wonder if managament will be interested in Taya who will be a free agents in a couple of weeks, the main picture needs someone with personality who can go in the ring since so far its Shida, Britt and Rosa because for some reason creative has no plans for Nyla.

The booking needs to improve like how the Sicarias can be more boring than the Riott Squad. 

[Zone Was Wrong]

Jan 2, 2021 22:55:19 GMT -5 markymark said:

Jan 2, 2021 21:42:19 GMT -5 Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby said:

On the topic of rating things as they stand as the year turns...

The year was frustrating, perhaps all the moreso because it seems like a corner was turned at the very last minute.

AEW's women's wrestling has been snakebitten since day one - 2019 saw Kylie Rae quit before she got going, Allie and Britt Baker suffer crises of confidence that killed their ring work, Awesome Kong and Brandi Rhodes utterly flop in their attempt at a major heel gimmick. Absolutely everything they tried to build around died on the vine except for Riho and Hikaru Shida, the former of whom wasn't really around as much as they needed her to be. 2020 brought the pandemic that gutted their top tier of Riho and Yuka Sakazaki, their reliable middle of Shanna, and a noteworthy guest in Shoko Nakajima, as well as canceling many planned visits (taking Kenny Omega at his word on that one). Kris Statlander going down to a torn ACL absolutely left them with a roster so effectively small as to be stifling.

But the effort was just not there with what they had.

There were a lot of questionable uses of the wrestlers available. They tried to get something out of Mel, Brandi, and Rebel in the ring, and it says a lot that Brandi is the one who got the most mileage out of that experimentation. For that matter, Rebel was used to pad out the Britt Baker/Big Swole feud, a spot that could just as easily have been given to a more exciting and competent younger wrestler who was being used at the time (like, say, Kenzie Paige) who could have had an actually decent match and carried momentum from it into something better. They brought in Ariane Andrew in what was probably an attempt to ride off Naomi's social media popularity, which didn't really go that well. Jade Cargill got an awkward-as-hell debut that put her in a position to be compared unfavorably to Jake the Snake, which is really not a good look on an obvious top prospect. Heather Monroe, Lil Swole, and Rachael Ellering were all brought in for two matches apiece, and for some reason none of them had a decent-length title match with Hikaru Shida even as Shida was completely adrift and lacking in opponents or anything at all to do as champion - a two-week program for each of them would have been a stronger use of everyone involved.

Speaking of Shida being adrift, the champion spent entirely too much of the year completely at a loss for anything to do. More egregious than that, though, is how her matches were presented. See, I can buy that Tony Khan and co were playing the long game with talent signings, that they wanted the Right People for their show and were holding out a few months until the Right People were available. But the booking and promoting of Shida as champion was atrocious for most of her reign. She issued an open challenge for the title, but then had non-title matches with Diamante and Heather Monroe - a plot hole that utterly confounded the commentary team, who had to spend the whole match talking around the fact that the title wasn't on the line despite the freaking open challenge that was placed on it. Nyla Rose and Vickie Guerrero would disappear for weeks on end, show up and demand a match with Shida, repeat, and then Shida just...accepted their demand with no conditions or anything, as if she just hadn't gotten around to it. Then, the breaking point seemed to be her match with Big Swole, a match that was completely ignored all night until the second it happened - no segment, no angle, not even a story to the match. This is not a good way to book a champion.

Fellow champion Serena Deeb showed up, lost, won, won a significant championship off-screen, came back, won a few times. At no point was she given a hint of a personality even as she had excellent matches. Not exactly a good look alongside Shida's treatment.

But then there's the positive note that the year ended on. The Big Swole/Hikaru Shida match was a nadir for effort in the division...and then the effort seemed to suddenly kick in right afterward. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the same time that Thunder Rosa came back. All of a sudden, Dark started to absolutely teem with interesting tryout talent like Allysin Kay, Lindsay Snow, Dreamgirl Ellie, Vertvixen, Elayna Black, Lady Frost, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and, just before the year ended (filming-wise), Ashley Vox. Red Velvet, KiLynn King, and Leyla Hirsch got modest pushes that have lined them up to fill out a good middle tier that will make the top tier of Shida, Baker, Nyla, Riho, Swole, and Deeb look better. Abadon and Anna Jay have gotten the kind of presentation and gentle booking touch that makes up for their weaknesses. The fact that Vox made it in even after news that Riho may be returning is also promising for the future, because it implies that they are actually looking to expand. Trainees KiLynn King and Dani Jordyn have ended the year as very exciting wrestlers who would deserve a push in the near future. Thunder Rosa looks to stick around.

There are still some uneasy parts, though. Leyla Hirsch, Ivelisse, Diamante, and Red Velvet have still not been added to the roster page despite showing up on the Heels website, which raises questions about whether they are sticking around for the long term. The amount of time dedicated to women's wrestling is still paltry - Cody walking to the ring gets more time than an angle that seven/eight women are wrapped up in, and the total of all women's segments still tops out at ten minutes on most shows (regardless of how many wrestlers are involved).

2021 could be the year that everything cracks open and gets going - an infusion of new talent like Ashley Vox, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and KiLynn King shaking up the scene on Dynamite; the critical mass of Riho, Baker, Deeb, Nyla, and Thunder Rosa all having the trust of management leading to more segments; the (fingers crossed) opening of international travel bringing back Yuka Sakazaki and Shoko Nakajima as well as whatever other joshi want to pop in, or perhaps opening a door for LuFisto; the wrapping up of existing bookings from the likes of Nicole Savoy and Hyan, or the increasing quality of work from newbies like Kenzie Paige and Elayna Black, providing AEW with a stronger pool to recruit from...

Or it could be a year that a lot of great talent continues to go to waste, because the talent was never as big a hurdle as the presentation and effort.

I wonder if managament will be interested in Taya who will be a free agents in a couple of weeks, the main picture needs someone with personality who can go in the ring since so far its Shida, Britt and Rosa because for some reason creative has no plans for Nyla.

The booking needs to improve like how the Sicarias can be more boring than the Riott Squad. 

Which sucks since those two are entertaining when they have the chance. Their trash talking gets pretty entertaining.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Jan 2, 2021 22:44:52 GMT -5 chrom said:

Jan 2, 2021 22:40:10 GMT -5 markymark said:

Leva wouldve better being Britts lackey than Rebel, like Rebel botched something that an 8 year couldve done last Wednesday on Dynamite

I honestly wonder why they bother keeping her. She's inept at everything they try to have her do

It's been said before but she's legitmately one of their makeup artists, and she's actually very good at that.

She's also very entertaining when she's just being Britt's dopey sidekick. She's gotten high marks on The Waiting Room for her Tony Atlas like laugh.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Jan 2, 2021 22:55:19 GMT -5 markymark said:

Jan 2, 2021 21:42:19 GMT -5 Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby said:

On the topic of rating things as they stand as the year turns...

The year was frustrating, perhaps all the moreso because it seems like a corner was turned at the very last minute.

AEW's women's wrestling has been snakebitten since day one - 2019 saw Kylie Rae quit before she got going, Allie and Britt Baker suffer crises of confidence that killed their ring work, Awesome Kong and Brandi Rhodes utterly flop in their attempt at a major heel gimmick. Absolutely everything they tried to build around died on the vine except for Riho and Hikaru Shida, the former of whom wasn't really around as much as they needed her to be. 2020 brought the pandemic that gutted their top tier of Riho and Yuka Sakazaki, their reliable middle of Shanna, and a noteworthy guest in Shoko Nakajima, as well as canceling many planned visits (taking Kenny Omega at his word on that one). Kris Statlander going down to a torn ACL absolutely left them with a roster so effectively small as to be stifling.

But the effort was just not there with what they had.

There were a lot of questionable uses of the wrestlers available. They tried to get something out of Mel, Brandi, and Rebel in the ring, and it says a lot that Brandi is the one who got the most mileage out of that experimentation. For that matter, Rebel was used to pad out the Britt Baker/Big Swole feud, a spot that could just as easily have been given to a more exciting and competent younger wrestler who was being used at the time (like, say, Kenzie Paige) who could have had an actually decent match and carried momentum from it into something better. They brought in Ariane Andrew in what was probably an attempt to ride off Naomi's social media popularity, which didn't really go that well. Jade Cargill got an awkward-as-hell debut that put her in a position to be compared unfavorably to Jake the Snake, which is really not a good look on an obvious top prospect. Heather Monroe, Lil Swole, and Rachael Ellering were all brought in for two matches apiece, and for some reason none of them had a decent-length title match with Hikaru Shida even as Shida was completely adrift and lacking in opponents or anything at all to do as champion - a two-week program for each of them would have been a stronger use of everyone involved.

Speaking of Shida being adrift, the champion spent entirely too much of the year completely at a loss for anything to do. More egregious than that, though, is how her matches were presented. See, I can buy that Tony Khan and co were playing the long game with talent signings, that they wanted the Right People for their show and were holding out a few months until the Right People were available. But the booking and promoting of Shida as champion was atrocious for most of her reign. She issued an open challenge for the title, but then had non-title matches with Diamante and Heather Monroe - a plot hole that utterly confounded the commentary team, who had to spend the whole match talking around the fact that the title wasn't on the line despite the freaking open challenge that was placed on it. Nyla Rose and Vickie Guerrero would disappear for weeks on end, show up and demand a match with Shida, repeat, and then Shida just...accepted their demand with no conditions or anything, as if she just hadn't gotten around to it. Then, the breaking point seemed to be her match with Big Swole, a match that was completely ignored all night until the second it happened - no segment, no angle, not even a story to the match. This is not a good way to book a champion.

Fellow champion Serena Deeb showed up, lost, won, won a significant championship off-screen, came back, won a few times. At no point was she given a hint of a personality even as she had excellent matches. Not exactly a good look alongside Shida's treatment.

But then there's the positive note that the year ended on. The Big Swole/Hikaru Shida match was a nadir for effort in the division...and then the effort seemed to suddenly kick in right afterward. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the same time that Thunder Rosa came back. All of a sudden, Dark started to absolutely teem with interesting tryout talent like Allysin Kay, Lindsay Snow, Dreamgirl Ellie, Vertvixen, Elayna Black, Lady Frost, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and, just before the year ended (filming-wise), Ashley Vox. Red Velvet, KiLynn King, and Leyla Hirsch got modest pushes that have lined them up to fill out a good middle tier that will make the top tier of Shida, Baker, Nyla, Riho, Swole, and Deeb look better. Abadon and Anna Jay have gotten the kind of presentation and gentle booking touch that makes up for their weaknesses. The fact that Vox made it in even after news that Riho may be returning is also promising for the future, because it implies that they are actually looking to expand. Trainees KiLynn King and Dani Jordyn have ended the year as very exciting wrestlers who would deserve a push in the near future. Thunder Rosa looks to stick around.

There are still some uneasy parts, though. Leyla Hirsch, Ivelisse, Diamante, and Red Velvet have still not been added to the roster page despite showing up on the Heels website, which raises questions about whether they are sticking around for the long term. The amount of time dedicated to women's wrestling is still paltry - Cody walking to the ring gets more time than an angle that seven/eight women are wrapped up in, and the total of all women's segments still tops out at ten minutes on most shows (regardless of how many wrestlers are involved).

2021 could be the year that everything cracks open and gets going - an infusion of new talent like Ashley Vox, Leyla Hirsch, Alex Gracia, and KiLynn King shaking up the scene on Dynamite; the critical mass of Riho, Baker, Deeb, Nyla, and Thunder Rosa all having the trust of management leading to more segments; the (fingers crossed) opening of international travel bringing back Yuka Sakazaki and Shoko Nakajima as well as whatever other joshi want to pop in, or perhaps opening a door for LuFisto; the wrapping up of existing bookings from the likes of Nicole Savoy and Hyan, or the increasing quality of work from newbies like Kenzie Paige and Elayna Black, providing AEW with a stronger pool to recruit from...

Or it could be a year that a lot of great talent continues to go to waste, because the talent was never as big a hurdle as the presentation and effort.

I wonder if managament will be interested in Taya who will be a free agents in a couple of weeks, the main picture needs someone with personality who can go in the ring since so far its Shida, Britt and Rosa because for some reason creative has no plans for Nyla.

The booking needs to improve like how the Sicarias can be more boring than the Riott Squad. 

Nyla is alligning with Jade, so whenever she wrestles, it looks like Nyla, and La Sicaria's are going to be involved there. They just need to build up who is going to oppose them.

Makes sense to wait till the new year for this, the records reset and they can basically now do whatever they want.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Jan 2, 2021 21:42:19 GMT -5 Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby said:

Fellow champion Serena Deeb showed up, lost, won, won a significant championship off-screen, came back, won a few times. At no point was she given a hint of a personality even as she had excellent matches. Not exactly a good look alongside Shida's treatment.

I mean you talked about the women's division having bad luck and this was another case of that. She was going to have a Waiting Room segment and because of a storm it got f***ed up.

Yes AEW could have done more with her before this fact but she was gonna get a segment all to herself to basically help establish her more in AEW and it was just a stroke of bad luck that we didn't get it. I hope they re-shoot it soon.