I haven’t been as in love with this Mandy Rose/Otis/Dolph Ziggler/Sonya Deville angle as some (cough * Geno * cough), but as we transition away from Beauty & The Beast to an honest-to-goodness non-title women’s feud, I’m transitioning from “that was a fun diversion” to “hot damn!”
And I’m giving most of the credit for that to last night’s performance by Deville, a version of which is embedded above. Building off the work she and Rose have been doing online since the April 3 SmackDown & WrestleMania 36, Sonya calls Mandy out for what she leads us to believe will be a tearful apology... and maybe something more.
She sells the emotion of that just enough to set-up the heel reveal, and that’s where the promo soars. WWE’s writers aren’t re-inventing the wheel here. It’s pretty boilerplate “overshadowed tag partner lets jealousy make them evil” stuff (I will give credit for the plan to secretly pimp out Mandy in exchange for help winning tag gold, though... that’s an inventively heinous scheme).
It’s Deville’s delivery that makes it something special, though. I absolutely believe every word she says - including believing she believes ruining Mandy’s shot at real happiness with Otis, and tricking her into being with Ziggler to increase their odds of becoming champs, was in everyone’s best interests.
Sign me up for more of this feud. And sign me up for whatever Sonya Deville does after it, too. Like this program, I’ve been lukewarm on her since her NXT days. But I didn’t know she had this range, this fire. Guess I should have. She was the “fire” in Fire ‘N’ Desire, right?
Well, I know now. Sonya Deville got an opportunity last night, and she killed it.