4 WWE Women’s Wrestling Takeaways: Rousey, Rinse, Repeat

Credit: WWE.com

Naomi and Mandy Quietly Steal the Month

I’ve sort of been silently watching this rivalry between Naomi and Mandy Rose play out over the last few weeks because I honestly didn’t know what to think about it. I guess I looked at it as midcard feud that didn’t warrant a lot of focus, but then the two had that big hotel scene last week on SmackDown Live and then competed in a match against one another this week that ended in frustrating fashion for Naomi, and it all started to click: this feels so much like a good, solid Attitude era program.

I’m not saying this exact rivalry would have happened in the same way during the Attitude era, but there are certainly some influences. The rivalry is personal in a way that almost every WWE rivalry in the last few years has been sorely lacking, and we’ve now had many peeks into the (fictional) personal lives of these Superstars. One of them – Mandy Rose – seems completely devoid of any redeeming qualities and appears to exist for the sole purpose of ruining lives. This is what WWE is missing these days.

It is impossible not to root for Naomi here. Both she and Rose are playing their roles with passion and believability, and the writers aren’t trying too hard to make it original. Instead, everyone seems focused on just making this memorable, and if things continue on their current course, much like the trashy Dawn Marie/Torrie Wilson feud over fifteen years ago this will go down as one of those classic SmackDown “moments in time.” And it certainly doesn’t hurt that both Naomi and Mandy Rose are getting some invaluable character development out of it.

Naomi and Mandy Rose have crept onto my radar so slowly that I was completely unprepared to be talking about them as one of the best things to happen this week in women’s wrestling. That’s the case, though, because an awkward turn to the good side for Alexa Bliss and a formulaic tag team match to hype the title match between Ronda Rousey and Sasha Banks weren’t going to cut it, while Naomi and Mandy were busy with some awesome character development work on SmackDown.