FanPost

Reflecting on the Charlotte vs. Natalya feud from Extreme Rules

WWE.com

Hello once again

Oh, hi. Were doing this again?

Of course we are doing this again. Do you think an utter lack of interest would stop an egomaniac enough to legitimately write up a discussion with himself?

I guess not and the last two were pretty fun to do. Okay, let's do this. I assume you want to discuss a certain storyline from Extreme Rules?

That I do. Specifically the Charlotte/Natalya storyline.

Wait, what? Seriously, we're again talking about Charlotte? Besides, weren't we supposed to touch on the Ambrose/Jericho feud?

Yes, that was the original plan as I thought their feud had really interesting approach to escalation and I had even been already making notes for that discussion.

Are you talking about the piece of paper with a drawing of a plant with a heart next to it and 'THERE MUST BE VENGEANCE' scrawled beneath it?

As I wrote, I had notes. Anyway, the last week of the feud just didn't truly click with me and the match itself was clumsy in a way that I didn't just really feel talking about it.

And Natalya/Charlotte wasn't? That ending was horrible. What about Reigns/Styles? That feud was pretty good.

Yeah, it was. I just really, really don't care about Reigns. The only reason I'm paying attention to his current feud is because Rollins is there. As for the ending of Natalya/Charlotte at Payback, I agree, it was really bad. Which makes it so interesting to me.

Sigh. Okay, let's do this then.

You know, you don't actually need to write the sigh, you can just sigh.

I made my choice. So, what makes the Charlotte/Natalya feud, as it stands at the time of writing, so interesting?

Because it is kind of a mess, but in an intriguing way. Before continuing further, the standard disclaimer as this isn't meant as truth in anyway and will include speculation based on the story shown to us. This is simply trying to figure out possible reasons why WWE chose the approach it did.

Naturally. I doubt anyone would, after all, take seriously comments from someone who feels like defending Charlotte storylines.

We're still doing this?

Just keeping it real. If I wasn't one the most Caucasian men one could ever meet, I'd even say I'm keeping it a hundred. What exactly are you arguing as being so intriguing about that storyline?

Because in a lot of ways, to me, that storyline felt like a creative tug-of-war behind the scenes. I've seen a lot of arguments that WWE is still ignoring, it's still the Divas or whatever which I don't think is really true in anyway. There is a much more of a focus on the women's champion and they've allowed storylines and character focus with the women's champion unlike any I can remember on the main roster before. A fair criticism is that they haven't done much with other women, but that also seems to be very much affected by the string of injuries the division at a critical time. Of course more could be done, but I do think it would be fair to argue that there is a renewed push for that division. However, at the same time, I felt there was a creative dispute on how to do that. Or perhaps a lack of trust is more accurate.

I feel this is proving my hesitations right. Are you really arguing that they chose to push the women's championship, but didn't trust the women involved?

I'm saying that it was trickier than that. Before going deeper in to that, we have to establish a couple of things about the initial situation leading to the feud. First, as has been established several times such as in our masterful discussion last month, Charlotte winning the title at Wrestlemania was most likely a very last minute decision. This had to have caused the creative to really scramble as all the signs were there that they were going to shake up Charlotte's character after Wrestlemania and separate her from Ric, which would have been a lot easier to do if she had lost that match.

Don't see why, just have Charlotte dump Ric the next night. It's not as if they did it so differently after Extreme Rules.

Good point and I'll return to that soon. However, back then, it didn't fit Charlotte's character at all and having her come out wanting to fight things out by herself would have come across as them try to paint Charlotte as heroic which would have been horrific to both the performer and the division itself. They instead went it opposite direction and had Charlotte the very next night lean in on the Ric's interference, making Ric's presence a focal point to the story and basically starting the countdown to his departure. It was a clear shift in Charlotte's character.

How? She still continued to cheat with Ric's intererference.

But she embraced in a different way. The Nattie match in LA was a clear example as they went with a DQ and the very next week she was laughing how that ending doesn't matter as guess who's still the champ, peeps. But that does smoothly bring us to the next point which is of course Natalya. If Wade Keller is to be believed, Nattie wasn't actually the planned post-Wrestlemania feud for Charlotte, but the reaction for her apparent title win at LA and their strong match at Roadblock made the company go with her.

Wait, what? Who then was supposed to be the first feud?

Who knows, maybe Sasha, maybe Paige. Although there would have been something great if they had gone with an insane risk like just taking a chance with Alicia Fox. Still, they went with Nattie, which seemed on a lot of fronts as a good choice. She was a stalwart of the Total Diva era, she had had great matches with Charlotte and their chemistry even seemed to overcome Nattie's really awkward promo style.

Her promos weren't that bad.

When with Charlotte, yes. Remember the commentary on Paige/Charlotte?

…Why did you have to remind me of that?

Sucks to be the one hit at times, isn't it? Anyway, this is where we get to the seeming disagreement on how to push the women's title feud.

By making it about their relatives, who just happened to be men?

Yes and no. Or rather no and yes. If you look at the basic story, as told by the performers themselves, it is actually a story about how Charlotte changed. Nattie's match with Charlotte at TakeOver basically made Charlotte in so many ways and where Charlotte beat Nattie fair and square while their legendary relatives looked on cheering them. Charlotte even won the Diva's title fairly by herself, yet she no longer respected Nattie or anyone else at the division and constantly chose the easy way out. Charlotte, who had once been the shining light who was supposed to save and redeem women's wrestling, was now a delusional champion enabled and corrupted by her father. The central theme of the feud was summed by Nattie at their contract signing where she stated that the Charlotte she faced at TakeOver no longer existed, that the moment she had won Wrestlemania the way she did had been the moment that had truly destroyed that remnant of the old Charlotte as could be seen in the way she and Ric became much more blatant with their cheating.

I don't recall that element being really pushed in the video packages.

Because it wasn't, hence the argument why this felt like a creative tug-of-war. The conflict between the Harts and the Flairs just almost randomly popped up as if to truly justify the feud, while those video packages ignored the majority of promos and stories told by the performers themselves. The story they were telling with Charlotte in this feud was really nuanced, actually one of the most nuanced stories they've told in the WWE over the last year, with her character undergoing massive evolution in a relatively short time. Yet as they were trying to tell that story, it felt like parts of the creative weren't confident in that story or it coming across and almost went out of their way to make the story about their families. Just look at the ER video package focus on their finishers, which neither woman had actually talked about after the submission match was announced and which was a seriously idiotic focus as they don't slap the finishers on at the same time and see which one hurts more.

So it seems like you agree with me, the creative clearly didn't value the women's title and was already sabotaging it by really ignoring them. Like when they made the Payback about Bret and Ric.

But this is where it becomes really bizarre. First, that Payback match actually had a thematic sense to it, which did seem intentional, they just didn't bring it up. It wasn't about repeating the Montreal Screwjob, which was questionable to say the least, but rather it was a perverted version of their original match where instead of cheering the women on in their honest fight, they were there to fight for and against cheating. And even the ending, while it could have been done so much better, was the ultimate moment of hubris by the Flairs which they continued with on the very following night.

I did actually really like that Queen Charlotte moment then. And Lil' Naitch was a nice nostalgia moment.

It was, wasn't it, even if it understandably went over the head of a lot people. But that brings us to the second point, in that if you look at the segment times and lengths they gave to the feud, or rather Charlotte, after Payback, they actually seemed to give her more visibility and larger segments after Payback.

So you're arguing that they at the same time appeared not to trust the women to deliver the story while showing them more faith to carry big segments? That is weird.

Starting to understand why I thought this feud to be an intriguing mess. Based on everything, it does seem that the company has faith in Charlotte being a star and she has been getting good receptions, so either the dissident parts of the creative didn't just trust the audience to accept such a story with the women or then they didn't trust Nattie to be able to tell her part of that story.

How dare you indicate Nattie couldn't be trusted?

Remember the moment during the commentary of Paige/Charlotte match when Nattie put over her cat's Instagram account?

Please stop bringing that commentary up. Just... Don't.

We can also talk about how Nattie sold the submissions at ER?

No, we can't. Are you really arguing that one commentary had creative lose confidence?

No, whatever the issues were backstage, they were happening before that, but it also probably didn't help. And those creative conflicts led to what we got at Extreme Rules.

Seriously, that ending.

Yeah, it's hard to argue with it and the thing, is the company knew it was going to crash. Consider, they heavily promoted four matches, with the women's match being one of them, and had in the previous PPVs given them the time and opportunity. At ER, not only did they put the women in the cool-down match spot despite having a couple much clearer options, when they allegedly removed the McMagon segment at the last moment, they gave that time to Jericho/Ambrose instead to the women as they knew time couldn't help that match after they pulled that ending.

You believe in rumors?

The Ambrose Asylum match felt much longer than it was originally intended, so it seems plausible. What seems really clear, though, is that adding Dana Brooke in to the mix was done at a very last minute and was not the original plan. Just look at Smackdown leading to the PPV, where they were clearly still building the Dana/Becky feud and it is very unlikely they would have ever had Emma hench to Charlotte.

So why would they have done it, then? Just for the chuckles?

Most likely because they are high on Dana, but saw that she was still too clumsy in the ring to carry a feud by themselves. Yet this again indicates how divided the cretive attitude towards the current women's feud backstage was as they were willing to sacrifice the potential blow-off of the Charlotte/Nattie feud in order to salvage Dana Brooke. It is actually kind of staggering when you think about it. It also created the awkward lead to the Monday segment where Charlotte dropped Ric.


Oh, you really talk about that segment?

No, not really. I loved it, but I understand people who don't and that's a separate discussion. However, I think we can all agree that the segment itself would have made a lot more sense if Charlotte had won against Nattie by cheating on her own. It actually seems that they had mapped that segment with the outcome in mind, which again supports the assertion that the decision to put Dana in to the mix was done at the last minute.

Doesn't all of this just show how little they care about the women if they are willing to sacrifice a PPV match?

It doesn't speak well of it, true, but I don't think it's as simple as that. If we only focus on the negatives they've done, like that ER match, we ignore the positives they've done, for example that as a company they have really started to push Charlotte as a star performer. They've given her the time and opportunities to shine and, while she is a very divisive performer, the crowd reactions are pretty good and her social media numbers shine, so there is really no reason to think that they're starting to hesitate on her. Especially since they are having her evolve her character even further and building on how she was before instead of having the random crazy character changes they had with both Nikki and AJ Lee. In addition, as much as those video segments tried to simplify the story, they did allow the women to go out and try to get the more nuanced version across.

So where do you think they go from here? To the better or the worse?

I honestly don't know. I don't think there's an easy answer, but I do think that the brand split is going to be really interesting in this sense as, based on the seeming conflict behind the current feud, I suspect the two brands are going to treat their women's stories very differently. We can only watch and hope for the best.

Hmm, I guess I have to grudgingly accept that, especially since I don't want this to go as insanely long as it went last time. Again, had fun doing this.

As did I, although I fear anyone reading all the way here will have been death to boredom my random musings on the matter. For all those people, I hope you found some enjoyment from these writings.

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