WrestleTalk Roundtable – WWE SmackDown Live – October 23, 2018

What was the worst part of last night’s episode?

Ashley D’Altilio

The women’s Evolution promo. I will continue to give these women’s segments the worst of the night until WWE actually does something relevant and meaningful with them. Having a couple women (the IIconics and Carmella) come out and go through their silly gimmicks does not do Evolution any justice. Promoting these women as jokes and nothing more than gimmicks will never bring them to the level at which they should be. WWE‘s women deserve so, so much better than this.

Sean Patrick Eckmann

You call that a go-home show? There wasn’t a single women’s wrestling match on the last show before Evolution. Becky and Charlotte’s pre-taped brawl was good, but the live show only had a mock Battle Royal to build to the show. That’s this Sunday!

Did we really need to revive a Hardy vs. Orton feud that should have ended at Hell in a Cell? Instead we had every woman crammed into a single spot. Coincidentally, the same problem that’s fundamental to the battle royal in the first place.

Steven Lugo

Rusev squashes Aiden English. What was the point of this feud again? To get Aiden over? To get fans gossiping about Lana? To stall chants of “Rusev Day”? I don’t know why you’d break up such a hot act if this was the end that was envisioned.

Aiden has apparently lost the feud after a brief TV match. It didn’t really do anything for Rusev, who had much more momentum behind him a few months ago when Aiden was by his side.

Where can Aiden go from here? I don’t know why so much time was invested in this. Maybe there’s more to come, but at this point I’m just not as interested. In my eyes, Rusev, Aiden, and Lana should still be massively over babyfaces.

Nicholas Holicki

I refuse to nominate that mess of a women’s Battle Royal segment, because frankly I’ve watched it twice and still neither understand nor care what it was meant to be.

No, I’m going with something that has the potential to be damaging in the long run. And that is Charlotte’s character at the moment. She’s an overly-sensitive, emotional, whiny wreck, and I’m just not sure how we’re meant to get behind that.

WWE have somehow made the conscious decision to reduce one of the best wrestlers in the world to a stereotypical, hapless ‘damsel in distress’ in this championship feud – which is stunning for a company that makes such a big show of positioning itself as a champion of female empowerment.

It unquestionably harms Charlotte, but it probably also impairs Becky Lynch. A good heel is made better by a sympathetic face, after all. And we’re missing one element.

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