Memo to the WWE writers: Watch NXT every week. Take notes. Youll learn how to actually book professional wrestling instead of shoehorning wrestlers into whatever crappy soap opera stuff you concocted. Case in point, the story of Bayley persevering and overcoming the much bigger, much strong Nia Jax was just an incredible tale. The NXT Womens Champion was clearly in trouble from the minute the bell rang, with Nia imposing her will on Bayley while not even being taken off her feet. Jax leveled Bayley and nearly turned her into jelly with a series of legdrops, but Bayley managed to pull off a huge upset, going back to the guillotine choke multiple times until she folded Jax in half and got the submission victory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9rsdzReo2Q The other half of this story that worked so well was Nia being the overconfident rookie. She was dominant, so she thought she could get a win by simply putting a foot on Bayley for a cover, which backfired since Bayley rallied. Jax also fell into the same trap three times, walking right into the guillotine choke each time. This match perfectly told the story of a champion figuring out her opponents weakness(es) inexperience and overconfidence and exploiting them to win. If only WWE could figure out how to do this.
Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.
