7 Ups And 9 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 17)

8. Childlike, Not An Actual Child

Uh-oh, let’s hope this is just premature and reading too much into things.

One of the concerns that often is expressed about NXT wrestlers when they’re called up to the main roster is that Vince McMahon and company won’t “get” their characters and will mess up their transition. We saw this with Emma, who went for an awkward, fun-loving woman who could wrestle to being a goofy sidekick for Santino Marella. Neville became a one-dimensional aerial performer. And the Ascension became cheap Road Warriors knock-offs.

So it’s understandable that many fans worried about what would happen with someone like Bayley, whose fangirl naiveté is central to her character (even though she was shedding it more and more toward the end of her NXT run). So far, she’s been handled pretty well, but during her match with Dana Brooke Monday, Corey Graves and Byron Saxton engaged in a strange argument.

Graves said he didn’t understand Bayley due to her “arrested development” as a perpetual 8-year-old, while Saxton claimed she embraced her childhood and innocence. Graves retorted that she was an adult, not a child.

It could easily be a one-off thing, but it set off warning bells here. There’s a smart way to “reset” Bayley being in WWE and overwhelmed as a lifelong fan living her dream, but if it’s going to be done by portraying a former NXT Women’s Champion as a gullible child, then that’s another thing. Let’s hope this is seeing things that aren’t really there.