Why is Eva Marie in WWE?

In the third edition of what will hopefully become a hit television series, we look at why Eva Marie is still in WWE after a career marked by surgery, delusion, and fan backlash.

WWE employs several men and women who seem to be little more than time fillers for weekly RAW and SmackDown marathons. If the company wants to fix the ratings problems of 2015 and tighten up their programming, perhaps it should look into sending some of these wrestlers out to pasture. This week, we take a look at Natalie Marie Coyle, AKA Eva Marie.

Three years ago this month, Eva Marie made her debut on RAW as Natalya’s protégé but it wasn’t long before she turned heel and aligned herself with the Bella Twins before losing to Natalya at Summerslam Axxess. She had forgettable wins and losses over the next year but did manage to get recognized by the Wrestling Observer Newsletter as being part of the “Worst Match of the Year” in 2013. Late in 2014, a ruptured breast implant sidelined her for 4 months but it wasn’t long before she again left television work on her skills with trainer Brian Kendrick. WWE wanted to make her a star come hell or high water. No one knows why.

Her return to NXT in 2015 was met with the same reaction one would expect if you kicked a puppy. It’s hard to think of a modern wrestler (male or female) who is more associated with the “All Botch Everything” philosophy than Eva Marie. At the risk of sounding like a chauvinist, the only rationale I can give for WWE so stubbornly pushing her into the mainstream is her looks. Yes, she’s a very attractive woman and surgical enhancement accidents aside, she looks great on a poster or as a standee.

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Physical beauty has nothing to do with talent, even if the WWE thinks the two are mutually inclusive (The Bellas). Eva’s lack of self-awareness came up during an interview with FanSided several months ago with our own Ted “Hans” Gruber:

"“Now that I have the training behind me, I think that really shows I do have the skills and talent to become a well-rounded wrestler.”"

Did you catch it? No, not the heavy handed hubris she was throwing down, but rather the idea of her training being complete and how that somehow means she has proven herself. Few, if any wrestlers could have her career up to this point and consider it a success or think that training was somehow “behind them.” Great wrestlers never stop training and are constantly seeking self-improvement. You could argue that it was simply a poor choice of words, but Eva’s ability to look at her past with rose-tinted glasses exudes a feeling of entitlement and impatience, as if her repeated ice cold receptions from the fans are secretly validations of her talent in disguise.

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Eva clearly doesn’t understand the difference between heel heat and genuine dislike. Not every critic is a “hater” who should be dismissed as someone who wants to see you fail. She has no qualities that can be touted as passable for a WWE superstar (heel or face) and all of Kendrick’s valuable training seems to have gone over her brightly colored head. She is the embodiment of a “diva” and also why WWE abandoned the term.

Eva spoke with E! News just before her appearance at WrestleMania 32 and it’s clear she still doesn’t get it:

"“I’m really thankful for Triple H and our chairman Vince McMahon because when I came back from my surgery I basically was like, ‘I want to be the face of this company and I want to bring something to the table.'”"

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Like a Thanksgiving fruit cake, nobody is interested in what she has decided to bring to the table. Let’s all just get up and leave and hope she doesn’t notice because she’s too busy admiring herself. Eva Marie belongs on the wall of a prepubescent teenage boy, not in a wrestling ring.

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