4 Ups And 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE NXT (Oct 15)

3. Nia Jax Is No 'Diva'

One of the biggest problems that fans have with the whole 'Divas' label given to the Women's Division in WWE is that it makes them sound like little girls. This infantilisation is hard to combat, because so many of the female wrestlers in the company have childish/teenage characteristics, even in NXT. Alexa Bliss, Emma and Dana are mean in an archetypically high-school way, performers like Evie are bubbly in a Powerpuff way, even Bayley, on the front lines of the Women's Wrestling movement, dresses like she's ten years old. Not so, Nia Jax. Nia Jax is not a Diva. Nia Jax is not a little girl. Nia Jax is a woman. Jax is the latest WWE inductee from the Royal Family of professional wrestling, the Anoa'is of Samoa. This family has produced Roman Reigns, Rikishi, Yokozuna, Umaga, and the Usos. The Rock is her cousin. Nia Jax is going to do well. She's also a woman with a plus-size figure, which in the land of Alexas, Bayleys and Sashas, is quite jarring to see at first, but then you realise how great that is. The company has been in dire need of a larger female athlete ever since Kharma left and Jax's frame adds a visceral legitimacy to her displays of power, rarely seen in women's wrestling. The bearhug she locked on poor Evie (who looked like a twiglet in comparison) looked genuinely gruelling. With Asuka and Jax arriving in NXT within weeks of each other, the NXT women's division proves again why it's perhaps the most exciting division, regardless of gender, in the whole company.