While the WWE Universe continues to argue over whether or not Ronda Rousey is a good wrestler, a bad wrestler, or the worst wrestler of all time, the rest of the SmackDown women's roster soldiers on in the hopes of keeping themselves on television in the fallout of Survivor Series.
With Rousey absent, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, Adam Pearce, and the rest of the WWE creative team turned their attention to the SmackDown undercard and brought fans not one but two segments featuring their female performers, an in-ring match between Emma and Shayna Baszler and a non-wrestling segment where Damage CTRL showed up to talk some trash. Not too shabby, right? Two segments on a show that featured six is a pretty good split considering the makeup of the roster, but Levesque, Pearce, and company made the most of the opportunity, with each presenting multiple extra performers to really optimize the women-to-minute ratio.
Though it didn't come first, the segment featuring Damage CTRL was by far the more interesting, as it featured a seeming face turn by Liv Morgan and the return of Tegan Nox, who re-debuted with a new look but the same finishing move, the Shiniest Wizard, which is a play on the move made famous by The Great Muta and passed on to Kaito Kiyomiya during his farewell tour. Nox may or may not also be a babyface, it's hard to know, really, but she isn't a huge fan of Damage CTRL and probably doesn't like the current SmackDown Women's Champion either, or her right-hand woman, Baszler, uses that right hand to execute her signature maneuver, the Cross Armbar.
Fortunately, if Knox is anti-Baszler, she won't have to look far to find a new set of friends, as many of her former NXT buddies, namely Shotzi and Raquel Rodriguez, have been putting their efforts into shutting down one-half of the Four Horsemen of MMA once and for all, as the tank-riding Blackheart explained after coming to the aid of Emma after her match with the “Queen of Spades.”
Shayna and Shotzi shoot ahead of an eventual WWE in-ring matchup.
Speaking with Cathy Kelley on the SmackDown LowDown, Shotzi and Raquel Rodriguez discussed why they came to the defense of Emma and their eventual plans to rid the promotion of the bullying duo of Rousey and Baszler.
“This is nothing new, I’ve been doing this for months,” Shotzi said. “The match was over, Shayna likes to play unfair, and I’m just here to stomp all over her stupid little games.”
Shotzi is correct, she's had Rousey's number for months now, and even after losing a match to the current champ at Survivor Series, it looks like that isn't going to change anytime soon. Rodriguez, too, has a bone to pick with the duo of Baszler and Rousey, as they “broke” her elbow before Survivor Series in a move that will supposedly keep her on the shelf for a few more weeks.
“Look, Shanya and Ronda love to play the number game,” Rodriguez said. “Well I wonder how it tastes now that the tables are turned.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Shotzi concluded. “And we’re just gonna keep adding these numbers on them.”
A true journalist who knows to talk to two sides of any story, Kelly – fortunately in a separate segment – caught up with Baszler to ask why she was fine with messing with Emma alone and maybe even Shotzi too but ran off when Rodriguez came out to confront her too.
“I mean, that’s the difference between me and everybody else, right?” Baszler asked rhetorically. “It takes three of them and one of me to do what I did, okay? Unlike them, I don’t need my friends here to handle business, as you saw tonight. Because we all know how this goes down when Ronda is here to help me, ask Raquel how that brace fits, you know? Honestly, get better questions.”
Whether Rousey returns to television next week or she leaves her business for Baszler to deal with on her own for a few weeks, it's clear the “Queen of Hearts” has cashed a number of checks over the past few weeks that are coming due. Will she settle those debts in the ring, besting the likes of Shotzi, Rodriguez, and maybe even Nox in the process too, or could she instead turn on Rousey and actually take the ring against the “The Baddest Woman on the Planet” for their first ever singles match? Only time will tell, but after three years without a singles title, it certainly would be interesting to see.