7 Match Star Ratings For WWE WrestleMania 37 - Night 2

6. Nia Jax & Shayna Baszler Vs. Natalya & Tamina - Women's Tag Team Title Match

Alexa Bliss
WWE.com

The crowd was dead.

In killing them with the unspeakable Fiend sh*t, what WWE conspired to accomplish here was making a group of prisoners resent being set free. Here's another lesson: when it comes to WWE, you can never be too cynical. Of course they made the first set of fans in over a year chant for CM Punk. Of course they did. Then, in a nice, strange development one would hope wasn't ironic, they got behind Tamina!

F*ck the opener. This was real sorcery.

Think about how little fans have cared about Tamina over the years. Then think about how much that would gnaw at a person's confidence and self-worth. Everybody knows her continuing feature role is inexplicable, but this was simply a nice thing that happened: small reward for a long, hard travelling life.

The match wasn't particularly good. The grinding babyface double team was an oxymoron of a sequence. When they worked over Shayna Baszler, they did it very slowly and tediously. But Tamina did break up a pin at more or less the last moment. There was *some* drama here. It went an insane amount of time, at 14 minutes, but they got the crowd into it.

It was a nice time, if not a particularly good match. It was chaotic, they whiffed air on an actual tag, and there was a longer waiting time for a cross body than there was to get fans back at a WWE show. The halfway respectable final two minutes were undermined by Natalya looking as dumb as f*ck by the finish, but that sort of thing barely even registers anymore, does it?

The Coen Brothers write smarter characters than this.

Star Rating: ★★½

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!