FanPost

State of the AEW Women's Division: July 2020

A few weeks back, I made this post about the AEW women's division, because I wanted to put down my thoughts of how I was feeling, how it was improving, how it was regressing, etc. In the roughly 3 weeks since, things have moved so as to make another such post necessary, or at least something I feel could be worthwhile.

To start with, it's worth noting the Deadly Draw, a women's tag team tournament with random teams that's going to be starting on YouTube this upcoming Monday. I go into a bit more detail in this post from a few days ago, but the tl;dr of it is: Regardless of whatever good intentions AEW might have with the tournament, only announcing a single non-AEW competitor (who's very much not an exciting get, at that) and putting reportedly the ENTIRE TOURNAMENT on YouTube instead of having at least a few of the later matches on television is at best misguided, and at worst actively detrimental to the AEW women's division and its chances of notably improving.

As for the individual segments, I decided a good way to talk about everyone would be to have individual focused sections for the people who were in the Top 5 as of the end of the month. I'll put a lot of effort into the people AEW is apparently presenting as the top of the division, and quickly go through everyone else at the end.

With that out of the way, let's talk individual competitors.

-AEW Women's Champion Hikaru Shida started July off incredibly hot with a match against Penelope Ford that was legitimately one of the highlights of Fyter Fest. Since then, though, she hasn't really been doing much. She was just sitting in the crowd the following week, stoically disapproving of Nyla Rose' promo about getting a new manager. The week after that, she gave a quick promo that was legitimately exciting, as she talked about how anyone who's strong enough, tough enough, and passionate enough could challenge for the AEW Women's Title. How great would that be? An open challenge, allowing AEW to pull in independent women like they are for men with the TNT championship, scout out some new talent, and maybe make some big hires! Unfortunately, even as women's wrestlers such as Thunder Rosa have expressed interest in accepting the challenge, nothing's come of it.

Shida then proceeded to have a match on Episode 43 of AEW Dark, from July 21st, against Rache Chanel. Shida makes a valiant effort to make this match watchable, but unfortunately failed as Rache Chanel is not a good wrestler in the slightest. There's a really weird spot in this match where Chanel just...combs Shida's hair? Not like roughly or anything, she just combs her hair, but I think it's supposed to be rough because Shida really sells it. Unfortunately it just makes it seem like Shida hates having her hair combed by strangers. Which, fair.

This last Wednesday, July 29th, Shida had a match against Diamante, which actually started off strong but ended up falling apart after the referee, for some reason, decided to get super uppity about Shida's shoulders not being on the mat during a pinfall even though you could barely tell they were up. Has this ever happened before in AEW, a referee going "oh, no, the shoulders are up slightly, can't count the pinfall"? I don't think I've ever seen it before. This clearly throws both women off their game, and the rest of the match suffers for it, ending up averaging out to just totally fine. They might have been able to get some momentum back if they had more than six godforsaken minutes to have their match, which leads me to a tangent:

Leaving behind all of the obvious issues of lack of character development, lack of meaningful story development (unless you're Britt Baker), lack of matches on TV, why on earth are the women of AEW always given the shortest matches? I only have two weeks of actually checking time, but both this week and last week the women's match was given absolutely no time. This last week, Shida's match against Diamante was shorter than MJF going "I would like to challenge for the championship" and before anyone tries it: I don't wanna hear "Oh MJF gets more time because he's more entertaining" NOBODY should be getting long-winded promos that are longer than a match a champion is in, unless that match is intended as a squash. I don't think Shida VS Diamante was intended as a squash? But they didn't even show Diamante's entrance so who knows, honestly, this company makes the most baffling choices.

Wrestlers need to be given time to practice, to actually tell a story if they want these matches to be meaningful. Clearly AEW understands this, considering how every other match on July 29th was over 15 minutes long even when they didn't need to be. Why on earth can't they seem to understand that the same applies to their women's division?

Despite a strong start, Shida overall did not have a great July, unfortunately, and with no obvious challenger for All Out besides maybe a rematch against Nyla Rose, there's no indication August will be any better.

-The last time we talked about Nyla Rose, Ranked 1st, she announced that she was getting a manager! The following week, July 15th, she revealed her manager was Vicki Guerrero, a person who it is hard for me to get excited about because I know her political views are extremely wack but that's not a topic for this piece. I still don't know if Nyla Rose needs a manager, but I was willing to see how this turned out.

So, in kayfabe, the purpose of a manager is to get their clients opportunities and matches, right? So why has Nyla Rose not wrestled since hiring Vicki Guerrero? She did not make an appearance at all on July 22nd, and only appeared on July 29th to find out who her random partner for the Deadly Draw would be: Ariane Andrew, the former Cameron in WWE. I'm not going to go into that whole thing, suffice to say I'm willing to see how they book it because it has the potential to be done well, so I'm willing to wait and see. But Nyla Rose has not so much as had a Dark match since hiring a manager. So, what is Vicki Guerrero doing? This is all very odd.

-Big Swole, Ranked 2nd, got suspended in one of the all-time stupidest decisions AEW has made. In an attempt to push her feud with Britt Baker, AEW decided the best course of action was to stop one of the few known female wrestlers they have from wrestling. Out of storyline, this decision still baffles me. In storyline, it ALSO BAFFLES ME, because Lance Archer is going around the back assaulting people every time someone asks him "what's up" and AEW doesn't give a shit, so I don't see why kidnapping an asshole and throwing them in a dumpster means "indefinite suspension" and god imagine if Big Swole is kayfabe suspended for longer than Sammy Guevara was actually suspended.

Big Swole also cut a pretty good promo on Britt Baker during her suspension, which was aired on the July 22nd episode of Dynamite...during the episodes single women's match, which was the shortest of the night even though MJF had a squash match earlier. Even when they make improvements, they regress! What is AEW doing?? Swole remains suspended as of the time of this writing, but she'll probably be back soon as Britt Baker has said Swole needs to beat a competitor of her choosing to get a match at All Out.

-Penelope Ford, Ranked 3rd, had a great match against Shida at Fyter Fest night 1, and then has proceeded to not show up on television at all in July, as far as I can recall. She was in the crowd at points I guess? She's had a couple matches on Dark which, to be honest, I haven't watched. Am I forgetting something? I feel like I must be forgetting something she's done this last month.

-Dr. Britt Baker, DMD, Ranked 4th, is...wait. 4th? Wasn't she 5th a week ago?

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She was! They moved her up a spot in the rankings! She's injured! Tangent time:

Okay, I've mentioned before that I don't like Britt Baker all that much. I think she gets too much mic time in a division where barely anyone else gets mic time, but I'll admit her promo on the July 22nd episode of Dynamite was decently entertaining. But why the hell did she get moved up a spot? Do they not want her out of the Top 5, and if so, why do they want an injured person to remain in their Top 5? Do they think people will forget about her if she's not ranked? Do they not recognize how stupid this makes their rankings look? You can argue "oh the rankings have always been sorta stupid and arbitrary", but they've never moved someone up in the rankings while they're injured and not having matches! I'm pretty meh on the arguments regarding rankings, but this is the first time I actively felt like they were worthless and arbitrary.

Anyway, Britt Baker continues to build her feud with Big Swole by talking trash now that Swole's not around. They're obviously heading towards a match at All Out, which...honestly it's been so long since I've seen Britt Baker or Big Swole wrestle I'm not sure how good or bad I anticipate that match being. I like Big Swole in the ring, and I think Britt Baker was fine, so I guess the match will probably be decent enough? But how do they expect people to care about a match when they won't (and in Britt Baker's case, can't) allow them to show off their wrestling to hype people up for it?

-Abadon, Ranked 5th, is also on this list. She beat Anna Jay in a match that served as an excuse to put Anna Jay in the Dark Order, and then had a match against Skyler Moore on AEW Dark episode 44, from this last Tuesday, July 28th. Both of those matches were, in my opinion, totally fine. She's definitely green, but she's not bad by any means.

Abadon has been getting a lot of guff for being "Dollar Store Su Yung", as if you could not easily describe The Elite as "Dollar Store nWo." That's not something I want to get into here, but you can feel free to get mad about it in the comments. She's not awful, and I'd rather they have even lesser wrestlers on the Top 5 than keep injured people up there. It's easy to say she doesn't deserve to be in the Top 5, but that's a symptom of the larger issue of AEW not having enough big names at the moment due to a combination of injuries and the pandemic preventing travel and also not seeming to put a ton of effort into signing new names. I'm not mad at Abadon for being in the Top 5, just at AEW for not putting effort into their competitors. Also her entrance kicks ass, but she needs a new titantron video.

-Let's jam through the rest:

  • Brandi Rhodes has basically confirmed that she'll be in the Deadly Draw, and hopes that she'll be with Allie, but if they actually want to push the idea of the teams being random I don't imagine that'll actually happen. More likely, Brandi Rhodes and Allie end up on different teams, fight at some point, and eventually that spins out into a feud. We'll see, neither woman has done much since their tag match at Fight for the Fallen.
  • Anna Jay finally returned, allegedly after getting coronavirus but I don't think there's been any official word on her absence so who knows. During the Dark Order VS. Omega/Page tag championship match from this last Wednesday, she stood in the back not doing or saying anything while Brodie Lee decided Colt Cabana got to do a bunch of talking on commentary, which you could argue is a pretty good metaphor for how AEW treats its men's and women's divisions HEYOOOOOOOOOO
  • Diamante had a pretty good match against Ivelisse on the July 22nd episode of Dynamite which was unfortunately short (like 6 minutes) and also was forced to share time with the Swole promo. She then had a match the following week against Shida which, again, ended up kinda falling apart for reasons I got into during Shida's section. Interestingly, she actually got a video package before the match talking about how she needed to prove herself in the match against Shida so she could get signed and finally make it big. Considering how the match went...I hope she's given another chance.
  • Ivelisse had that one match against Diamante which, again, was good considering time restraints. Apparently she also has kind of a bad reputation backstage though? We'll see if she sticks around.
  • Kris Statlander remains injured, and is sorely missed in an already light women's division.
  • Riho, Yuka Sakazaki, Shanna, and Bea Priestley (and possibly others) remain out of the US due to the pandemic. They, too, are sorely missed.
  • Anyone seen Mel? No? Eh.
In my other post from July 9th, I somewhat optimistically gave AEW a C+ for how the women's division was going, based on some strong recent matches and potentially interesting developments. Now, at the end of the month, I 'm downgrading it significant, only refraining from failing it because of a strong championship match at the beginning of the month. The Deadly Draw was AEW's one chance at putting some effort into spotlighting the women's division some more, and they're shoving it on YouTube where it won't take time away from, I dunno, another 20 minute Cody match or a 10 minute MJF promo. The one match the women get each week are finally getting advertised, and then only getting 5 minutes to put on a show. They're finally giving people promos, and then playing them during the women's matches. For everything AEW does to take a step forward, they take two steps back. This is depressing.

Grade: D

What do you guys think? Can the Deadly Draw help the women's division even without TV time? Am I being too harsh, or too light on AEW's efforts? What names do you think AEW should sign to help out (besides Tessa Blanchard, I'm tired of arguing about Tessa Blanchard)? Let me know in the comments!

The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Cageside Seats readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cageside Seats editors or staff.