Next week, Nyla Rose faces Riho for her AEW Women’s Championship in their first singles meeting since the championship was won on the first episode of Dynamite.
On Wednesday Night, Nyla Rose established herself not only as the number one competitor for Riho’s AEW Women’s Championship, but also as one of the most physically imposing people on a major wrestling roster today.
A backstage segment saw Rose – a mainstay on AEW television, aside from her brief suspension for putting official Rick Knox through a table – being called to action by PAC who had cornered the champion Riho to force Kenny Omega into a match at Revolution, the promotion’s upcoming Pay Per View.
After Kenny agreed to the match, PAC seemingly satisfied said, “I may be a bastard Kenny, but I’m no beast. She is.” and crossed the camera. Rose then lunged from backstage and shoulder tackled Riho before pulling her to her feet by her hair and again power bombing the smaller competitor onto a table.
She turned to the camera and with a crazed look in her eye called out the champion saying, “You have been marked and next week, your ass is mine.”
With a later announcement by Jim Ross confirming that the contest taking place in Austin, Texas is indeed for the title, here are three reasons why Nyla Rose should be crowned the new AEW Women’s Champion.
Believability
Okay, so we all know that Professional Wrestling, the sport we all love, is predetermined. The winners are known ahead of time.
That’s old news, wrestling fans have gotten used to turning off that hypercritical part of our brains that says an undead man should not, in reality, face off with an aging male stripper to see if one of them has to retire or just didn’t win, just as an example of course.
Riho is billed at 5’1 and 99 pounds. Even with her 13 years of in-ring experience, as well as a clean and crisp move set, there is a severe lack of believability in certain match-ups when you consider her size.
Nyla Rose, on the other hand, is billed at 5’9 and 169 pounds. Even in a world where were turning off the part of our brain that makes us pause and look at if something is possible, this seems a little far-fetched.
Even if Riho is faster, more nimble and able to avoid the high impact offense of Rose, there is no level of striking from her that would realistically chop Rose down. Even in the match that won Riho her championship, she didn’t beat Nyla, not really.
Nyla went for a high impact maneuver off the top rope to put an exclamation point on her victory and Riho was able to roll out-of-the-way using Rose’s size against her and capitalize on the dazed Rose.
Availability
Arguably, the most important draws in a new promotion that helps it set up a foothold in the public consciousness are the champions. Ambassadors for your brand who make appearances and visits with fans.
Nyla Rose is here and week after week, she and the other women of AEW have built a competitive division realistically without a champion.
Since winning her title, Riho has appeared on only five of the last 17 episodes of television with one appearance on AEW Dark, the YouTube exclusive series. On the other hand Nyla has wrestled on six episodes of Dynamite, three episodes of Dark, appeared on commentary once and had several backstage segments.
There is an inarguable benefit to having a champion who can consistently appear on TV week in and out. It gives the other members of your division something to work towards and someone to chase after. Riho is very, very talented, but she is not at a Brock Lesnar level where she can come and go as she pleases, at least not in the west. Not yet.
It seems like Riho is resistant to making the full-time move to the US, which, with her obligations to Joshi promotions in Japan and the comfort of living there her whole life is considered, is understandable.
Unfortunately, if you cannot commit to being present at the very least more often than you are gone. You cannot hold a major championship in today’s wrestling climate. The title needs to be put on a full-time competitor for it to be considered a legitimate tent pole of the AEW product.
The Message it Sends
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All Elite Wrestling is hesitant to comment on Nyla’s past, quite possibly because it’s not any of our business, and they are right to feel that way because it’s not. She is a very talented and imposing competitor. That’s all the tv program should focus on. In a perfect world, Nyla being featured prominently on TNT should not be a big deal, women are shown on television all the time.
But we don’t and it is, Highlighting the fact that Nyla Rose is the first transgender performer signed to a major wrestling company in the United States is a major step for the progression of LGBT+ rights in the United States and the normalization of LGBT+ voices in our homes and media sources.
Putting the title on Nyla sends the message around the world that AEW stands for something bigger than wrestling. That AEW, as well as the wrestling world, is home for the misfits and the weirdos, the ones who don’t fit in and feel that they don’t belong.
That wrestling is a safe place to be yourself; be open and authentically you. It proves that storylines reflecting our lives in the media that we frequent will not be boiled down to a half-assed wedding interruption any longer.