With the Road to WrestleMania truly kicking off this week, the professional wrestling took a backseat to some high end sports entertainment. This was a week that saw Shane McMahon return to the WWE, Dean Ambrose crawl out of an ambulance in a neck brace to confront Brock Lesnar, and Chris Jericho and AJ Styles continuing their will they/won’t they wrestling romance.
While RAW and SmackDown were certainly entertaining shows this week, and while NXT produced another episode of solid wrestling television, it was Main Event that brought the no frills wrestling action this week, as Paige and Naomi had the match that stayed with me more than any other this week.
The New Day had a pair of fun 6-mans and AJ Styles and American Alpha continued performing well, but Paige and Naomi reminded everybody why not only are they being overlooked as WWE focuses on the (well-deserved) pushes of Three of the Four Horsewoman, but that WWE Main Event, banished to Hulu and a 2-week delay WWE Network release, is the place for good fun pro wrestling matches.
A few months back, Main Event was the place for great Divas action (and the odd fun Kevin Owens match) while WWE blundered the first few months of the NXT call-ups of Charlotte, Sasha Banks, and Becky Lynch. For the last month, it was the place for good wrestling action. I don’t know who’s booking Main Event right now – maybe it’s good ol’ Road Dogg, who has turned SmackDown into must-watch TV – but they continue to give a platform for talented and overlooked superstars of the WWE roster to have their best wrestling matches.
Anyways, the match: Paige and Naomi kicked off their match with some stalling from Naomi and crowd work from Paige, wrapping everybody into what could’ve just been a cold, thrown-out their contest. Tamina, lurking outside, added to the presentation. Paige threw out some great-looking strikes and took it to commercial with a wild cannonball off the apron onto both Naomi and Tamina.
After commercial is where things really took off: this wasn’t your standard WWE “heel beats up the face, works a chinlock, face comes back, back-and-forth finish with signature spots” affair – it felt like these two ladies were putting it all on the line, going back-and-forth the whole time and building to a big crescendo. That crescendo ended up seeing Tamina getting involved and Naomi hitting the Rear View (sigh) for what was a tremendous near fall. After that, these days you expect Paige to tap out Naomi – but nope, Naomi countered her way into a submission finish.
All the applause to these two for not following the usual WWE tropes and having a really fun match that stood out as the best pure wrestling match I watched from World Wrestling Entertainment television this week. The focus is on Charlotte/Becky/Sasha now (again, well-deserved), but knowing that WWE not only has these two waiting in the wings, as well as a slew of potential call-ups down in NXT, means that we’re going to be seeing some great stuff from the women’s division for a long time to come.
