The Wrestling Section

Throughout the entire history of the WWE, we've never seen, and probably will never see again, a woman booked as strong as Asuka was to start her run. Coming into WWE in 2015 with over a decade of experience wrestling in her native Japan as Kana, Asuka was immediately treated like a huge deal. Hell, even from the first time we saw her on a WWE broadcast, she was seated in the crowd of NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn next to two Hall of Famers in Ric Flair & Sgt. Slaughter. Officially debuting in October 2015, Asuka would go her entire NXT career, nearly two full years, without being pinned or submitted. She was booked so strong, in fact, that instead of dropping the NXT Women's Championship in what would be her last match in NXT at the time to Ember Moon (even after sustaining an injury), an act that is almost always the case for champions leaving NXT for the main roster, Asuka retained and later vacated the title, keeping her streak intact. For a company that is more than willing t...

The 2020 Wrestling Observer Awards are officially out, and as always, a Worst Match of the Year has been voted on. The unlucky winner this year is Bray Wyatt vs Bruan Strowman in the Wyatt Swamp Fight from the oddly named Horror Show at Extreme Rules, a show that also featured a match where you could only win by extracting your opponents' eye. It was a weird show. But back to the match. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, where having fans in the stands was not an option, the cinematic style became a favorite form of match presentation for just about any company that could afford to do it. We got some great ones, like the Stadium Stampede, the Boneyard match, and the Firefly Funhouse match. However, by the end of the year, the concept was clearly starting to overstay its welcome. AEW's own chapter in the Deletion series underwhelmed, Impact seemed to just make matches like Ken Shamrock vs Sami Callihan and Moose vs EC3 cinematic for funsies, and WWE sacrificed one of its mos...

Even though she's seen a lot of success under her current heel gimmick, it's hard to argue that WWE didn't bungle the main roster run of Bayley early on. In NXT, Bayley was one of the cornerstones that elevated women's wrestling not just on the yellow brand, but throughout the entire company. She's been involved in some of the greatest women's matches the company has ever had against the likes of Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, and Asuka. Bayley is so good that she got genuinely great matches out of Nia Jax and Eva Marie. That's how good she is. On top of that, her character was perfect for the PG audience. It should've been a slam dunk. And yet, as WWE tends to do with can't miss talents...they missed. It started out pretty good. Bayley debuted in the summer of 2016 and by February 2017, she became the Raw Women's Champion. She'd defend that title past WrestleMania until...this feud. Alexa Bliss earned a title shot against Bayley at Payback......

The tag team division in WWE is...not good, and hasn't been for a long time. From frequent title changes to little to no build for title matches, it's clear that WWE doesn't take the tag team scene as seriously as other wrestling companies & brands. This is especially jarring when one of those brands, NXT, is literally part of the same company, and their tag division doesn't have the same problems that the main roster does. And this isn't just a problem now, WWE has really struggled to build a strong and interesting division for a long time now, and one of the worst examples was the Tag Team Gauntlet match from Extreme Rules 2010. This match pitted the Unified WWE Tag Team Champions ShoMiz, The Big Show and The Miz, against three teams. Those three teams were The Hart Dynasty's Tyson Kidd and David Hart Smith (Davey Boy Smith Jr.), John Morrison & R-Truth, and Mark Henry & MVP. That's four tag teams in one match. One of them is an actual tag team...