How WWE Destroyed Shayna Baszler

Some - the last remaining desperate few - believed that Baszler was reborn when she sat on the swings next to Alexa Bliss and threatened her via her supernatural doll Lilly, but read the end of that f*cking sentence and see if you can work out how it connects to the start because your writer just committed it to the page and it still makes no sense.

A common idiom from any fan of any failing sports team is that "it's the hope that kills you". For those unfamiliar or lucky enough to support a team that wins more than it loses, the principle behind it is that a small dose of optimism from an occasional win makes the typically awful times harder to stomach. The doses of optimism in Baszler's booking have been so minuscule that most of the hope was diffused long before Lilly gave her wobbly legs.

And anyway, the hope shouldn't kill you - Shayna Baszler should. That's the point! WWE destroyed her not just by having her lose over and over and over again as part of a team she wanted no part of, but by having all of that happen and her seemingly not care. Some eternal optimists were so happy to see her actually giving a sh*t again in that segment with Bliss that they intentionally avoided looking at the risible and all-consuming set dressing.

But you have to. You have to stare hard at it all, with critical eye and rational mind. Lilly's a bit of Fiend Stuff while Bray Wyatt's off TV. WWE love it so we're all stuck with it. Alexa Bliss is stuck talking to and through a doll. Shayna Baszler is trying to out-psyche it off the back of more defeats in the last year than she suffered in in the previous three combined.

NXT's ratings-drawing killer is WWE's time-filling murder victim. And it didn't even take a living thing to deliver the fatal blow.