While cSs isn't a mixed marital arts-focused website any longer, this promotional video for UFC 193 seems particularly apropos for much of the conversation around here of late:
Tremendous hype video, and titling it "Revolution" is probably a bit of a cheap shot from Dana White at WWE's hashtag Diva Revolution - but when you have developed a female fighter that's outdrawn all but the top .1% of WWE's pay-per-view (PPV)s ever, you get to take that kind of a shot.
The tagline at the end is perfect: "Every revolution starts with a fight."
What it doesn't start with is arguing about who started the revolution in the first place, because no one cares. This video right here is what WWE's whole "revolution" should be all about.
And it is... at NXT. As amazing as their own hype video was, it's almost a shame they didn't think of this idea first for Bayley and Sasha, because as we saw last night on the must watch WWE 24 on Takeover: Brooklyn, both have an extremely similar backstory of also wanting to do what they're doing since they were little girls in the face of expectations that it's not what they're supposed to be doing.
While there were some positives to last night's Raw (Sasha's reaction and her not jobbing in her hometown and a solid Paige/Natalya match), when you listen to the insufferably awful commentary and the bickering promos, you can tell that in Vince's mind they have no plans to change the presentation from their comparison on their own pre-show last week to Bravo's Real Housewives series.
And that is the biggest difference at NXT. Not the length of matches, but the presentation.
At NXT, it's taken seriously. It's not differentiated because they're women; it's the same presentation that UFC has used to turn Ronda Rousey into one of the best drawing fighters in company history.
And given how over Sasha is without even getting featured, that presentation is probably something WWE could use to turn her into one of their top draws (spurious a term as that may be for 2015 WWE where no one draws).
WWE's revolution also started with a fight - several of them in fact - in NXT. Unfortunately, on the main roster, they don't want to acknowledge that. Let's hope their revolution doesn't fail as a result.