At Fastlane last night, Bayley finally broke Charlotte’s pay-per-view streak thanks to a massive assist from Sasha Banks. In the process, many fans seem to believe that WWE has damaged Bayley’s babyface character.
It’s not true, and in fact WWE is in the process of presenting a smart arc for the Bayley character. But for a number of reasons—some kayfabe, some reality—any possible storyline they’re building in Raw’s women’s division is destined to go un- or underappreciated.
Great expectations
Bayley’s character journey in NXT is one of the more complete narratives in modern WWE and built her into the most beloved babyface in the developmental brand’s history. It was a masterclass in wrestling storytelling and performance.
But this presented a problem upon her call up. So much of Bayley’s story was told in NXT that it left WWE with a quandary: continue her narrative arc from NXT or reset the character.
What the company attempted was a strange mixture that muddled the narrative. WWE wanted to have its cake of labeling Bayley as an underdog and eat it too by simultaneously presenting her as a top star. In the process, they skipped a number of steps in her main roster babyface journey, instead relying on fans’ awareness of her NXT arc to position her as the preeminent babyface.
In addition to that mixed bag, Raw creative is so bad at consistently, week-in, week-out, telling stories and adequately fleshing out characters that there’s little recognition of what story is actually being told.
Here’s what (appears) to be the narrative sketch since last August:
Charlotte attempted to tell Bayley she didn’t belong on the main roster, despite Bayley beating her in short order on TV and being placed into a championship match barely a month into her main roster tenure. After Clash of Champions, Bayley cut a promo suggesting that Charlotte and Sasha were a clear class above her (despite Sasha being booked as just as much a dink in the title match as Bayley). The next several months saw Sasha and Charlotte continually trading the Raw Women’s Championship, with Sasha winning on TV and Charlotte winning on pay-per-view.
Little, if any, attempt was made to explain just why Charlotte was so much better than Sasha on pay-per-view. Sasha was beaten down and broken at the end of the feud (“I don’t feel like The Boss”), and was then repeatedly attacked by Nia Jax, while Charlotte moved into a program with Bayley. Banks repeatedly was defeated by Jax, but eventually helped Bayley beat Jax for the number one contendership.
Then, on a random episode of Raw, Sasha helped Bayley to win the championship from Charlotte and hugged her in the ring afterward.
It should be noted that Sasha helping Bayley win the championship is a smart callback to Battleground last July, when Bayley helped Sasha as her surprise tag team partner. This directly led to Sasha receiving her first singles championship match the next night, which she won. Bayley also took Dana Brooke out of the equation backstage on Raw last Oct. 3 when Sasha won her second championship.
Thus Bayley helped Sasha win the championship twice, and Sasha helped Bayley win the championship and then retain it on pay-per-view. What all of this makes clear is that WWE has continued the narrative arc of Bayley-Sasha as respected competitors and eventually friends that began in NXT and was furthered at Battleground.
But WWE has simultaneously begun trying to tell a very subtle “Sasha corrupts a naive Bayley” angle. Unfortunately, it’s so subtle that it’s barely comprehensible. It has been referenced multiple times by Stephanie McMahon that Sasha wants Bayley to be the champion because The Boss thinks she’s incapable of beating Charlotte on pay-per-view—but could beat Bayley on pay-per-view.
This is likely a true motivation on Banks’ part, even if she is also genuinely happy for her friend: The Boss is a three-dimensional, complicated character that is driven by a desire to be a messianic hero advancing women’s wrestling into stardom—with her at the forefront. But underneath that, she is not a monster. She wants to be good, but realizes (or will soon) that being bad is the better way to reach her goals.
Bayley’s naivety to this truth makes sense when incorporating the entire history between her and The Boss. It has been made clear that being a WWE champion has been Bayley’s life goal since she was ten years old, and being able to accomplish that goal while also earning the friendship of her top rival through toil, sweat and tears is doubly sweet.
Unfortunately, that sweetness comes at a price. Banks has convinced Bayley that her actively helping Bayley win and then retain the title is justified because Dana was involved and Charlotte’s a cheater and who knows what she’d do, yada yada.
And Bayley is naive because she so badly wants those justifications to be legitimate. She won the championship, but in the process was convinced by her friend that these rationalizations were OK. In essence, Bayley was blinded by her happiness at achieving her lifelong goal—and Sasha was plenty aware of that fact and actively worked to make it so. Witness her being so over-the-top buddy-buddy with Bayley on Raw Talk last night.
When Banks turns on Bayley, it’s supposed to be doubly devastating because Sasha did so much to legitimately help Bayley, and vice versa. But it won’t have the intended effect because Bayley hasn’t been sufficiently built as the beloved hero on the main roster. Additionally, WWE hasn’t adequately demonstrated that this is indeed a deliberate ploy by Banks, instead again relying on preconceived fan notions that “of course Sasha is going to turn heel soon” rather than actually moving toward that eventuality in story.
Furthermore, Stephanie McMahon and Charlotte clearly don’t have Bayley’s best interests in mind, so it makes sense in storyline Bayley would listen to her friend instead of the two heels. But when the heels are actively presenting the (accurate) case that Sasha is manipulating Bayley, it also makes the viewer disbelieve the intended story.
Complicating matters is that Sasha Banks is a babyface that the crowd has made clear it wants to cheer. Moreover, fans made plain they’ve wanted to see a Sasha Banks run at the top of the division since the call up in July 2015. (“WE WANT SASHA! WE WANT SASHA!”) The fact that never actually occurred engendered meta sympathy for the character of Sasha Banks, meaning that any such possible deviousness by Banks is waved away because the crowd is not conditioned to think of her as a bad guy—even if everyone is aware that she’ll eventually turn heel again.
Again, there are some clever bits and pieces to this entire narrative. But that’s just it—they’re bits and pieces fighting against a black hole of apathy. WWE has not tied the strings together, leaving the viewer confused as to what is actually happening.
Going streaking—for reasons
What was the point?
No, really. What was the point?
After hijacking the division for months and months, Charlotte’s pay-per-view streak ended unceremoniously on a B pay-per-view. In a sense, it’s like ripping off a bandaid. Might as well get it over with than drag it out any longer.
But ... really?
It’s interesting that this format does largely tack to the NXT history, as well. During the development of NXT’s women’s division, Charlotte was the champion with the other characters playing off her and each other. That seems to be what Raw was aiming for with its division. The major difference, however, is that NXT wasn’t booked to make the chasing babyfaces (or beloved heel, in Banks’ case) look like dinks again, and again, and again.
Making the top babyface in the division tap out with seconds left in an IronMan match that she was winning, and then tapping again in overtime to lose, is an absolutely criminal piece of booking. Doing it as the culmination of a six-month feud that ended with the heel triumphant is asinine.
What did the streak bring? Frankly, a lot of distaste for Raw, but basically no heel heat for Charlotte. In fact, in a delicious bit of irony, her dominance actually brought a number of fans to her side. (Imagine that—a performer booked to look like an elite asskicker wins backers.)
If you’re going to do it, do it with Flair. But maybe just don’t do a ridiculous pay-per-view streak unless you’re willing to seriously sketch out (and it’s not like Raw doesn’t have the time!) how the streak affects the psyches of the chasing babyfaces. Aside from the odd moment of frustration from Banks (“Unlike some, I don’t settle for losing”) the streak wasn’t used as a device to build characters, but rather was an end of its own. Its mere existence overwhelmed any other threads that WWE was attempting to present.
In the end, it was pointless—and the way it was finally ended, with the wimpiest of whimpers, cheapened literally everything done before.
Raw deal
(Great, another comparison to SmackDown.)
Yes, SmackDown Live receives such critical acclaim and fan devotion because it’s extremely well structured. But ever since a few weeks after the brand split, it also began to get the benefit of the doubt from fans because it started occupying the role previously filled by NXT as an alternative to Raw. (It’s surely no coincidence that one of SmackDown’s key creative heads was an integral figure in NXT’s glory days.) There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest is that booking outcomes tend to align with the desires of fans.
Putting the WWE Championship on AJ Styles, the Women’s Championship on Becky Lynch, and the Tag Team Championships on Heath Slater and Rhyno bought the blue brand a tremendous amount of goodwill, giving it time to flesh out other, slower-building narratives, including one that is now widely seen as the best long form story in recent WWE memory.
It’s evident from everything above that there are enough story bits and pieces on Raw to make a compelling wireframe. The problem is that the red brand hasn’t conditioned fans to expect anything other than incoherency, inconsistency, and depression. Nobody—read: nobody—wants to have so little faith in Raw storylines to the point of convincing ourselves the red brand doesn’t even try to tell stories, but rather aims solely for “moments.” But for a huge segment of the audience, well, here we are.
SmackDown Live is clearly and unequivocally the babyface brand to fans—as witnessed when it gets chants on episodes of Monday Night Raw, prompting Stephanie McMahon to literally tell the crowd last Nov. 15, “You guys are at Raw.”
For Raw, perception is everything. Even if the red brand started hitting its stories out of the park, until it regains the trust of the fans no one will actually believe. Even if Raw creative magically figured out how to intelligently present its characters to advance narrative arcs, fans would scoff at their efforts.
As long as Monday Night Raw is believed to be unnecessarily in opposition to fan desires, any good work creative does is nullified. Unfortunately, this means that even when Raw starts down an interesting and engaging path, widespread cynicism crushes any possible enthusiasm. There’s a fundamental distrust that must be mended, but there doesn’t appear to be any recognition on WWE’s part this is the case.
Instead, in-house alternative products are presented, and it’s little surprise that those are the platforms that continually receive widespread acclaim. NXT, which has been inconsistent at building storylines and characters since 2015, still has an enormous amount of leverage with the fanbase because of its history of continually delivering desired results in compelling ways.
Moreover, the TakeOver model of building feuds and angles not through an endless series of singles matches and rematches but backstage promos and beat downs and tags very closely resembles SmackDown’s approach of building to bigger pay-per-view matches. This method keeps everything fresh and avoids problems of overexposure. Raw, meanwhile, is basically a series of holding patterns and time wasting that is interrupted on occasion for exciting! unpredictable! swerves!
This unfortunate Monday night trademark affects all aspects of the program, but has especially deprived its women’s division of proper recognition for the frequently exceedingly good work by its performers.
When you combine a history of incomplete and inadequate storytelling with often depressing booking, it means that fans will not give the product any time to actually present a narrative.
There’s no panacea to be found, either. Bayley’s handling, when really investigated, has actually been done decently well. But the problem is that the viewer shouldn’t have to “really investigate” the threads to understand the story being told. Marks on the internet shouldn’t be required to do the job that WWE creative is paid for in order to make any sense of the kayfabe narrative.