WWE SmackDown Smacks and Downs: Black sheep, lien, and reptilians, oh my!

Smack: the rapid growth of Sonya “Devil”le

When Daria Berenato appeared on Tough Enough alongside her former partner-now rival Amanda Saccommano, I picked Berenato and Patrick Clark to be the winners.

They didn’t win, but it’s almost like they did win. After all, we see them on our television as Sonya Deville, Mandy Rose, and Velveteen Dream, respectively.

Do you remember who actually won? (It was Josh Bredl and Sara Lee)

Deville, however, seemed victim to bad timing as other former mixed martial artists began to make their way to WWE, and with impact. Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler came in and basically upstaged Deville, helped in part because of their being pushed as legitimate badass champions.

We never had that with Deville. There would be allusions to her background in MMA on commentary, but nothing in her character development really channeled that experience.

Maybe that was the right call, in hindsight, because I am LOVING this character turn to the devil that is Sonya Deville.

Her promo two weeks ago was great, though I did caution her tone was a little too similar throughout. I know she just needs a bit more time to grow on the mic, so I’m not concerned.

I like how she came out in the middle of the match (more on this later) and kept doing her part to distract Rose. What made it even better is her comments were both honest, factual, and justifiable.

Deville discussed how she so graciously gave her spot to Rose in last year’s Money in the Bank ladder match. Not only that, she mentioned how she helped Rose ascend the ladder to the top and yet Rose still couldn’t grab the briefcase.

Add this to her comments two weeks ago and we have the best kind of heel: a dastardly piece of crap that is mostly justified in their actions. When we, as fans, hate a wrestler’s actions but are able to understand why they did such nasty thing, then it makes it hard to hate them. Your loyalties are being pulled in different directions, particularly if you have real-world experience with any given story.

Here’s where Deville’s MMA background, without necessarily being acknowledged, aids in her character because her work can be stiff, and she knows how to bring forth that intensity and ferocity from her real-life fighting experience.

That shining wizard she hit to the back of Rose’s head looked painful, only emphasized by the crash of Rose’s face as she crumbled into the ringside steps. Speaking of knees, her sliding knee to a sitting opponent is both sweet and brutal looking.

I wonder if this will be added to the PPV in a week, or be extended to possibly SummerSlam. I can see Deville continually avoiding Rose or putting obstacles in her way before she gives Rose a match. Either way, I’m really excited that we finally have more to “Daddy Deville” than being Rose’s tag team partner.