5 Real Reasons Why CAN'T MISS Wrestling Prospects Bombed
4. Emma
Unfortunately, it became much easier to count the reasons Tenille Dashwood failed to hit big in WWE than it did recount what it was specifically that should have made her a massive star to begin with.
A product of the true golden era of NXT before the entire brand pivoted to chasing critical acclaim and/or trying to keep pace with the wider wrestling landscape beyond WWE, Emma was a good wrestler with a great, potentially transcendent connection with the crowd. This was the formula for the black-and-gold brand in 2014, thanks to Triple H being bound by the valuable restrictions of talent and time.
It was catnip for Paul Levesque as he entered the next stage of his global domination plan. Politicking his way into a new role (that he was admittedly lightyears better at than his predecessor), 'The Game' had to at long last do what he was so allergic to when he was a Champion and actually get some other wrestlers over. Alongside an invaluable Dusty Rhodes before his 2015 passing, Levesque set about extracting gold from what remained of some dud FCW developmental years in the (first) John Laurinaitis era.
The strategy had multiple strands; 1) Reconnect a disparate WWE back with its fanbase, or at least wrestling's current take on it. Vince McMahon's 2000s monopoly era stubbornness had pulled the market leader as far away from what so much of the market wanted as it had ever been. Numbers reflected it until Stephanie McMahon spotted the need to move PG in line with a monster Mattel deal and sponsors in general at long last not side-eying Sports Entertainment. The booking wasn't getting any better though, and Mr McMahon-Helmsley was as good a choice as anybody to do it on the smaller scale in NXT. 2) Improve the supply line between developmental and the main roster, expanding beyond the Florida loop that talent had become comfortable with, and providing actual preparation for life on Raw and SmackDown rather than sending ill-prepared talent to the proverbial slaughterhouse. 3) Get Triple H over as the honourable and respected saviour of the company/industry/world should he hypothetically ever be in the position to take it over.
Emma - and the women's division in general - was at the centre of all of it. NXT was attempting to rebuild audience interest in women's wrestling in the shadow of the doomed Divas Division on the main roster, and Emma was an unexpected shining light. WWE had long been the place where "nice" had gone to die, but that's precisely what Emma was, and her character was cast-iron proof that things could be different in WWE. Her lack of coordination was her superpower rather than a minor failing to be mocked, which tacitly said as much about the braintrust behind the show as those in front of the camera.
To smart mark fans absolutely desperate for a show that even slightly appealed to them, Emma was a bonding agent. Rises in wrestling are often less organic than they might appear, but NXT was expert at stage-managing ascents. Her off-kilter music was an ear-worm in keeping with her apparent lack of coordination and her out-of-time hand dance was easy to imitate in the stands, especially when she started using the move to pop bubbles that greeted her entrance. The act clicked massively, and the in-ring work backed it up as more than just an entrance. Never was this more apparent than in her defeat against Paige at NXT Arrival, the WWE Network's first live broadcast and precursor for the TakeOvers to follow. Then justifiably held aloft as the best women's match the company had ever promoted under any banner, it could and should have been her ticket to the top but that had sadly already been stamped out by a main roster debut that force-fed every positive trait the character had to the point of glum disinterest.
Emma was earnestly funny, see, so Vince McMahon paired her with Santino Marella for forced comedy that zeroed in on her dance and just about nothing else. The relationship wasn't built, the respect wasn't earned, the matches barely even happened, and the character died on the vine. She was so well respected in NXT that a salvage job nearly worked when she wore her main roster scars as a heel in 2015, but the pattern repeated when that got over too; Emma and Dana Brooke were excellent midcard heels that were hung out to dry with their 2016 call-ups, but for the Aussie, the worst was somehow yet to come.
The bewildering Emmalina repackaging (weeks and weeks of vignettes to the point where it was more gag than gimmick, to build to a debut in which she immediately binned it and went back to her old persona) should have been a point of no return before her actual one arrived. In a late-2017 rematch of a quality outing the pair had in NXT, she was used to help launch Asuka on the main roster before an untimely and unfair release. As a cruel coda to the story, a 2022 return only lasted around a year and ended in brutal fashion when she was once again cut literally hours after tweeting her excitement over WWE returning to Australia for Elimination Chamber in 2024.
As unceremonious an end as one could realistically have, her post on it appeared to laugh through the obvious disappointment. Once again it was too much to expect WWE to get the joke.