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Sasha Banks on the main roster


Sean Liska

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Paige and Sasha are the two youngest wrestlers on the main roster I think we should give them a few years before judging weather or not they can be game changers. Paige was clearly overhyped before making her main roster debut, but Sasha, Becky, and Charlotte all coming in at once should give the division a good boost in quality. It takes time for workers to win over the main roster audience. Bryan was the best guy on the planet and it still took him a few years to get over.

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While I agree somewhat, I think that it's a world of difference. Yes, Bryan had the goofy beard and got treated like a sideshow. But he also didn't have years of the audience experience creating a) expectation that his matches would be shit break matches and b.) the audience not caring one bit about his character. These are both things that Sasha, Becky and Charlotte have to face. If NXT was a bigger deal to the majority of WWE fans before the move, maybe I might have more faith.

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Yeah the women have their work cut out for them turning around the culture of main roster women's matches. However, I've seen plenty of main roster women's matches get enough time to do something good this year, and I'd say less than 20% of those matches were any good at all. AJ got plenty of time, and routinely shit out crappy matches. Paige has had a bunch of ppv matches that got decent time and couldn't do anything with it.

 

I feel pretty confident in saying the success rate is going to up when you put the new NXT callups in those situations.

 

This year on ppv the women's matches have got 8:04, 4:34, 6:42, 9:18, 6:13, 6:04, 7:03, and 11:18

 

The women's matches on the NXT specials have went 12:54, 16:49, 10:40, 12:12, 12:28, and 15:33

 

I honestly think they'll get the extra 4 minutes or so to do their thing once they start showing the 7 minutes they're being given isn't a complete waste of time.

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i've been saying for months that it's not just about match length, but also about pacing. The main roster women seem to always work at a sprint's pace and none of them, even the good ones, have the chops to do that successfully. the main roster women also tend to abandon any semblance of pro wrestling psychology where the NXT women do basic fundamental wrestling stuff really well.

 

I don't know if it's Vince, Dunn, the road agents, the women themselves or what but the pace that they work on the main roster and the way the matches are built is really different from what we see on NXT and it's not just a function of match time.

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They need to drop the Flair from Charlotte's routine as they have with her name: it's one thing to have her do the Stephens Roll onto the apron, or maybe keep the bridging Figure-4, but the chops, the whoo's, it's all too much especially for a girl who's your straight, dominant athlete "ace" but without any great charisma etc; she's really more Bret than Flair, which is fine, but Bret knew he couldn't be Hogan and didn't try to be.

 

The women's match just wasn't any good. Meltzer made a point about how practised their NXT matches are, and I've no doubt they are, but whilst there's been some telegraphing in their past singles matches it was far more pronounced in the three-way. You could practically see them going 1-2-3 in their head with everything. I've said from the start they need a girl far, far better than either Sasha or Charlotte to bring about the change they're hoping for, but the match needed to at least be at the level of their NXT matches and fell short of that.

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The women's match just wasn't any good. Meltzer made a point about how practised their NXT matches are, and I've no doubt they are, but whilst there's been some telegraphing in their past singles matches it was far more pronounced in the three-way. You could practically see them going 1-2-3 in their head with everything. I've said from the start they need a girl far, far better than either Sasha or Charlotte to bring about the change they're hoping for, but the match needed to at least be at the level of their NXT matches and fell short of that.

That's what I was implying a few days ago. They have access to a building like the Performance Center that allows them almost unlimited time to perfect whatever big match they have coming up. I'm not too worried about Becky who has shown she can go when needed on the indies, but Sasha wasn't lighting the world on fire before she was signed and Charlotte isn't what I would call bad, but not really good either. She showed a lot of promise initially, but has plateaued since that Natalya match. Sasha definitely has the charisma to adapt though and any possible kinks in-ring should be able to get worked out on the road.

 

One question I have to ask: why does anyone like/care about Alicia Fox aside from how attractive she looks? She's a better version of Rosa Mendes. She's always seemed sloppy and a few years ago seemed to actively injure other women with a crappy flipping leg drop she insisted on doing.

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I dig Alicia...most of the time. It took her years to get any good, she was all arms and legs and even now on a bad day still can be. But at some point she figured out how to work as a heel; when she's on she can bump and stooge for the face and then come back with some pretty hurty looking offense (that's where her long limbs and flexibility come in handy). She has that beautiful northern lights suplex, and nice kicks.

 

Consistency is her main problem. I mean if her and Natalya only worked each other until the end of time they'd both look like a million bucks. But they just have this weird chemistry that neither one can quite replicate with anyone else. But Alicia has shown good stuff in other matches. She's one of those guys who looks better under the radar, because she can look clumsy as hell in the two-minute tango on Raw, but get 8 mins on Superstars a day later and look great.

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I've said from the start they need a girl far, far better than either Sasha or Charlotte to bring about the change they're hoping for, but the match needed to at least be at the level of their NXT matches and fell short of that.

While I somewhat agree with that, there simply is no better girl on the roster (or in wrestling period that I can think of) than Sasha or Charlotte. You have to give them time, but they both are already better workers than any other diva. And Sasha is oh so hot :)

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I still don't feel like Charlotte is ready yet. You can tell she's going to be really good, but at the moment her athleticism hides the fact that she occasionally gets lost in a way that Sasha, Becky and Bayley don't. I actually think she was the weakest link of the three-way at Battleground, thought she stumbled through a few things and Brie looked like she knew she had to put a shift it. Obviously, Charlotte has only been wrestling for couple of years, so she's certainly got the tools to become really good, but I'd rank her the least of the three NXT girls called up.

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It's not helping Charlotte that they have her playing face. I've never found her the least bit sympathetic or likeable. Becky played a good FIP on Raw, but they've given the fans no reason to care about her outside of "hey this is a good wrestler who had good matches in NXT that 80% of our main roster audience hasn't seen". Sasha is the star of the bunch, and I'll be shocked if Bayley isn't the most over woman in the company when she comes up. Bayley is right there with Zayn as the best pure babyface in WWE, and I'd put her not that far behind Sasha as the second best all around act out of the women's division.

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It's probably just because she was injured, but I really hope they decided on holding back on Bayley's call up because they're aware that they've got something special on their hands with her. Not in terms of ring skill necessarily (though I'd put her on par with Becky and Sasha), but due to her connection to the crowd. I follow her on Twitter, and there are so many younger fans who idolize her that it's a whole new audience for them and a potential merch goldmine. Keeping her separate, rather than lumped in with the other NXT girls, will help her come off as a bigger deal when she debuts.

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It's not helping Charlotte that they have her playing face. I've never found her the least bit sympathetic or likeable. Becky played a good FIP on Raw, but they've given the fans no reason to care about her outside of "hey this is a good wrestler who had good matches in NXT that 80% of our main roster audience hasn't seen". Sasha is the star of the bunch, and I'll be shocked if Bayley isn't the most over woman in the company when she comes up. Bayley is right there with Zayn as the best pure babyface in WWE, and I'd put her not that far behind Sasha as the second best all around act out of the women's division.

totally agree about Bayley. such an awesome, natural babyface.

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It's probably just because she was injured, but I really hope they decided on holding back on Bayley's call up because they're aware that they've got something special on their hands with her. Not in terms of ring skill necessarily (though I'd put her on par with Becky and Sasha), but due to her connection to the crowd. I follow her on Twitter, and there are so many younger fans who idolize her that it's a whole new audience for them and a potential merch goldmine. Keeping her separate, rather than lumped in with the other NXT girls, will help her come off as a bigger deal when she debuts.

 

I applaud your optimism. It is too pure for this world.

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I don't think Bayley is getting called up anytime soon. It seems like she's going to take Sasha's title since Banks is moving to the main roster.

 

How long until we get reports that Kevin Dunn (or Vince McMahon, I guess) doesn't think she's pretty enough? Wasn't that why they didn't use Sexy Star after her tryout?

 

Bayley is obviously plenty attractive of course, but it wouldn't shock me to read that.

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Sasha is really the only supremely talented female wrestler which is precisely why this movement will fail. Kudos to them though for trying.

The issue is they just have to have matches as good as the under/mid card males. Becky, Sasha, Charlotte, Paige and company can do that.

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Sasha is really the only supremely talented female wrestler which is precisely why this movement will fail. Kudos to them though for trying.

 

She's the most talented by far. But, in one way or another a combination of Becky, Charlotte, Alicia, Nattie, Nikki, Paige, Emma, and Bailey is a good grouping of talented workers that can make good stuff happen. It all depends on whether or not Vince/Dunn/Creative are willing to see them as individuals with unique positives and negatives to their skill sets.

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The issue is they just have to have matches as good as the under/mid card males. Becky, Sasha, Charlotte, Paige and company can do that.

 

It all depends on whether or not Vince/Dunn/Creative are willing to see them as individuals with unique positives and negatives to their skill sets.

 

Therein lies the rub. A bad performance by the women will wreck the experiment, but a great performance does not guarantee its success. The under- and midcard males don't have the deck stacked against them to the extent that the women do. Which is really saying something! I don't know whether any think short of a nuclear weapon could blast through the misogyny that is seemingly at play.

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I think Vince and company seeing a huge crowd in Brooklyn go absolutely nuts for Bayley is going to turn some heads, and a large majority of that crowd will the be grown men. Bayley is a character that will get over with every demographic if her NXT run is any indication.

 

I believe HHH sees something with the women, and he trusts them in big spots. I think this is the best shot women's wrestling has ever had at succeeding in WWE with the talent they have and HHH and Steph backing it. It's now or never pretty much.

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It's not helping Charlotte that they have her playing face. I've never found her the least bit sympathetic or likeable.

 

She's one of the worst babyfaces I've ever seen. She needs to turn heel ASAP.

 

How long until we get reports that Kevin Dunn (or Vince McMahon, I guess) doesn't think she's pretty enough? Wasn't that why they didn't use Sexy Star after her tryout?

 

Bayley is obviously plenty attractive of course, but it wouldn't shock me to read that.

 

Didn't Bill DeMott haze her for "not being attractive"? I remember reading that.

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