10 Great Wrestling Matches You Didn’t Know You Wanted
3. Eva Marie Vs. Bayley - NXT, November 19, 2015
So inexplicably good as to be worthy of dreaded cliché, this entertainment machine of a pro wrestling encounter saw WWE fire on all cylinders to expertly manipulate the audience.
In a very intriguing development, NXT preyed on the anxiety of its hardcore audience by portraying ‘WWE Corporate’ as heels. Charles Robinson was dispatched in the referee role to ensure no “controversy”. The gigantic Nia Jax flanked Women’s Title challenger and persona non grata Eva Marie to the ring. An Eva Marie fan plant stood beside Izzy.
Creative knew full well the extent to which Eva Marie was despised. Arthritic in movement—likely because John Laurinaitis and Kevin Dunn downloaded her, Weird Science-style, from a computer under their perverted blueprints—the prospect of her defeating the beloved Bayley, and sullying the cult pro wrestling brand with the very worst of sports entertainment, was über-distressing.
NXT changed the question. It didn’t matter that Bayley had to drag Eva across the ring when she was selling (Eva Marie, reminder, was absolutely hopeless at this); the sense of just-f*ck-off-already paranoia pervaded everything, obscuring the action itself. In Marie’s defence, she sold well for Bayley’s comeback, which Full Sail, having bore witness to a sh*t-storm of chicanery, went absolutely nuts for.
This minor meta masterclass was genuinely outstanding, for what it was. Soberingly, NXT did more with Eva Marie in 2015 than Vince McMahon has done with the massively-muscled Bobby Lashley in 2018.