8 Wrestling Game-Changers Who Became JOBBERS!
3. Emma
The bout pitting Paige Vs Emma for the NXT Women's Title at the black-and-gold brand's "Arrival" special in 2014 was once justifiably and comfortably considered the best women's match the company - any version of the company - had ever promoted.
Ultimately, the bar was raised pretty much bi-monthly after that, with each TakeOver match from the division topping the last, but Paige and Emma as characters and workers were poof of concept for the women getting the time and attention they'd been institutionally robbed of going back decades. Within weeks of the bout, Paige was called up to the main roster, but having gotten so close to it once before, Emma wasn't the one selected to get another shot at the newly-vacated title - she was already doing bits on Raw and SmackDown, and watching her gimmick die in the process.
As NXT's top babyface on the crest of a creative boom writ large for the brand, Emma's growth specifically defined what the rebuild had been all about. She was nice, in the company where the very concept had been eroded by the constant crushing of babyfaces and a prior developmental system that sounded like the worst possible version of a way in. Emma was charmingly uncoordinated in kayfabe, had an irritant of an entrance theme that became an ear-worm, and was never put in a position to patronise or belittle the audience that immediately just wanted to back her. A janky dance accompanied said entrance, hands and arms at full extension albeit not in time with the music, and at some point somebody had the exceptional idea to fire bubbles up into the air for the fingers to dreamily pop. If that all sounds like yet another too-cutesy-for-wrestling gimmick, it's only because this sort of thing used to be the exception rather than the rule because of performers like Emma.
Alas, Vince McMahon kept the "funny isn't money" idiom alive longer than he had any right, and her call up came with an instant pairing alongside Santino Marella for some brutal forced fun that sucked the life out of both of them. He laughed with her idiosyncrasies, told the audience they should to, and predictably none of it clicked. The gimmick rotted to such an extent that when she returned to NXT, she had to do so as a heel, castigating her old self to try and regain credibility. It worked too, but the cycle repeated - she got over once again, WWE devised an "Emmalina" repackaging, both sides cooled on that, and she was once again left to drown in main roster waters before a harsh 2017 release. It got no better when Triple H assumed control of things in 2022 - the return lasted just over a year, and she became the butt of some cruel humour when she got released the same day she toasted WWE's impending return to Australia.
From viewing her social media, Tenille Dashwood looks substantially happier and content out of WWE than part of it, but she'll remain a textbook 2010s missed opportunity when the retrospectives are written on that cursed time.