10 Problems EVERY Wrestling Company Has In Common
6. Women's Wrestling
This week, Lana challenged for Asuka's RAW Women's Title.
Some proclaimed this was a rebuttal to various takes that WWE had buried Lana for the dig husband Miro cracked on his AEW debut, but it only really proves that WWE doesn't know how to book: how do you go from being hapless table fodder to title contender?
WWE has the best and most committed women's wrestling in the U.S., but the best-booked?
That's relative; even a programme as strong and as detailed as Sasha Banks Vs. Bayley has fallen victim to WWE's usual bullsh*t non-finish chicanery and the dire, carny impulse to banter off a match as an empty promise. The storytelling in NXT is functional - sometimes cringe-worthy, depending on which hapless performer is handed abysmal material that week - and it actively undermines the many superb in-ring talents the brand boasts.
Still, it's committed, which can't be said of AEW, which seems trapped in an endless paradox in 2020. Decimated by lockdown, the talent, broadly, is super-green - but they aren't going to get any less greener trapped in just the one penultimate segment. The booking isn't terrible, but it's dry compared to the details-rich long-term heft displayed across virtually every other Dynamite quarter hour. IMPACT is good if not electric nor deep. ROH has never once excelled where AEW, cruelly, sometimes does.
New Japan simply doesn't bother, and you need only look at the complexion of a modern joshi crowd - contrasted with that of the masses of young girls who idolised their heroes decades ago - to look upon that as a profound missed opportunity irrespective of tradition.