Paige’s Downfall

In late 2013 and early 2014 when you thought about the next big thing in women’s wrestling the first person you thought of was Paige. In NXT Paige had built a reputation as a badass ‘Anti Diva’ with above average in ring skills. People thought once she made it to the main roster she would be like the next Trish or Lita. However now, in early/mid 2016 she has become just another woman on the roster, one of the stars of Total Divas, and to be honest her in ring skills are pretty average or even below average at this point. So where did the badass anti diva go wrong? Or is her quick fall into irrelevance WWE’s fault for the overexposure she had in her first year on the main roster? In an attempt to answer these questions I’ll be going back to watch a variety of her matches from FCW, NXT, and WWE.

FCW:

Paige and Sofia Cortez vs Kaitlyn and Audrey Marie from FCW March 18 2012

This was a very basic match which was kind of disappointing because I thought Kaitlyn and Paige could’ve had some good interactions. Paige did some basic heel stuff but didn’t look very impressive here. She was competent but nobody really did much as it was just a quick little TV match. No major botches or anything, the submission she used at the end (was similar to the PTO) took a little longer to set up than usual but it was whatever.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfjKXI1smpk

Paige and Rick Victor w/Sofia Cortez vs Aiden English and Audrey Marie from FCW April 8, 2012

This was actually a surprisingly fun mixed tag match. There was no clear botches or anything and there was some good stuff here. Paige and Victor made it very clear that they were the heels in the match, including Paige slapping English at one point. Paige character wise didn’t do much different from what she does now but there was a difference in her movements compared to now I felt like. There was an urgency to what she was doing which was nice to see.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1KiN98xFM

Paige vs Raquel Diaz from FCW May 27, 2012

Another basic match. They tried to do a sunset flip spot, Raquel fell and it was very funny. But then she made me feel bad for laughing at it later in the match when she did Three Amigos (she is the daughter of Eddie Guerrero for those of you who don’t know). Paige again didn’t really do much. I recommend watching it for the ending and the funny botch but not exactly a classic here.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naXYuInWeR4

Paige vs Audrey Marie from FCW July 1, 2012

This started off good and ended up being an okay match aside from the finish. Audrey was probably more competent than some of the other girls at the time but she was still pretty basic. Paige did fine, doing some unique submissions. The finish was horrible, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a match end with someone getting disqualified for not stopping kicking their opponent in the corner. Just a bizarre way to end a match.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFrE65gkxtM

Paige vs Audrey Marie No DQ from FCW July 15, 2012

This was a pretty uneventful no disqualification match, with nothing really happening that couldn’t have happened in a normal match. They brought a chair in the ring but didn’t end up doing anything with it and the finish being a normal DDT when the chair was right there and it could’ve been a DDT onto the chair was just kind of strange. Not saying girls should necessarily be getting DDT’d onto chairs in developmental, but the chair had no real reason to be there at all and it just looked strange. Another match that was alright at best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2KAWxQKnus

Overall Review of Paige in FCW:

Paige didn’t really have any matches that were anything special based on what I watched of her FCW run but this very well could have been because of the other womens’ inexperience and incompetence. Paige showed a lot of potential and seemed to already have the badass and vicious heel character down perfectly. She definitely showed a lot more aggression than most women signed to WWE did in this time. Considering at the time she was in FCW/NXT women like Kelly Kelly and the Bella Twins (not taking a shot at the Bellas but they were the definition of Divas at the time as this was before they began to majorly improve in the ring) were at the forefront of the division I understand the appeal she had as she was a complete opposite of them. She eventually blended into being just another “diva” but we’ll get to that later. So from FCW we saw a badass, hot, woman with way more attitude than WWE fans were used to seeing in the divas division. The character was already down, but was she able to take it to the next level with her ring work in NXT facing people more competent than the FCW girls? (Not saying it’s the girls’ fault they were bad, I’ve heard many stories about how they weren’t given the opportunity to get good and progress because of the limitations they had in training)

NXT:

Tamina Snuka vs Paige from NXT taped May 23, 2013

If you’re wondering why Tamina was competing in NXT, it was for the NXT Women’s Championship Tournament that was held in 2013 to crown the first ever champion. The tournament included divas from both NXT and the main roster. This was actually a fun little match which was surprising to me as Tamina usually is very boring to me. Tamina was in control for the majority of the match and it was weird but cool to see Paige booked as the underdog which is very different than the role she played in most of her FCW matches.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgy-DW1nwlI

Paige vs Alicia Fox taped June 19, 2013

Alicia, like Tamina was competing in NXT for the Women’s Championship Tournament. This was a decent match, with Fox in control for a lot of it. Paige’s offense looked a lot like what she does on the main roster. She was very aggressive and it was definitely fine for what it was, but Paige at this point still has yet to impress me when it comes to her offense. I like the elbows in the corner a lot and what she is doing is aggressive and good but her moveset seems kind of limited and she seems to do the same few moves in every match.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2KAWxQKnus

Paige vs Natalya from NXT December 4, 2013

This was the first womens match I ever watched from NXT as I heard a lot of great things about it at the time. This is my first time going back and watching it. The first time I watched it I remember not thinking it lived up to the hype, but maybe my opinion will change the second time. After rewatching it…wow. What a great match. Definitely the best match from Paige that I’ve watched up to this point and I don’t remember her having any matches this good. She showed more versatility than ever in this match, with Nattie’s offense forcing her to work a more technical style but also maintaining the brutal, hard hitting style she typically worked. One of my favorite matches from both women, if you haven’t seen it you should watch it immediately. This is easily Paige’s best performance up until this point and for the first time I didn’t feel like her offense left more to be desired. This match showed the world that Paige, when given talented and developed opponents, could put on fantastic matches.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVYBz7kszso

Paige vs Emma from NXT Arrival

Was the match with Natalya a fluke or would Paige be able to prove her talent to the world once again only a few months after the Nattie match? I remember watching this and feeling it was very overrated at the time. Unlike the match with Nattie that I also didn’t like at the time, this didn’t blow me away. It was good but I’m not sure why this gets talked about so much. If the match with Nattie was on a Takeover special and this was on a random NXT episode, I don’t think anyone would talk about this. It was a fine match but I think people were just shocked that a women’s match got so much time and thought it was better than it was because of that.

Paige vs Sasha Banks from NXT March 13, 2014

This was no different from the kind of basic divas matches that you’d see on Raw or Smackdown at the time. It was a little longer but a bizarrely large section of the match featured Sasha doing rest holds to Paige. Nothing impressive but nothing bad. This was kind of similar to Paige’s matches with inexperienced people in FCW. It sounds kind of crazy to compare Sasha Banks to the likes of Audrey Marie and Raquel Diaz but she was very basic at this point.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPCAH1h8RhY

Overall Review of Paige in NXT:

Paige did much better in NXT than FCW, but she still hadn’t at this point convinced me that she was capable of making less experienced girls look good. Against talented opponents she thrives and looks very good but against less talented opponents her offense leaves something to be desired and she’s not very impressive. You might be wondering why I’m looking so closely at unimportant TV matches, but I’m just trying to understand why she was treated like a goddess before entering the main roster and for the first six months or so of her main roster run. At this point she definitely had the tools to be successful on the main roster, but I’m still not entirely sold on her.

Main Roster matches (Links not included because they were all watched on the WWE Network)

Paige vs Tamina Extreme Rules 2014:

This wasn’t very good. They had a match in NXT almost exactly a year earlier that did a much better job of holding my interest. This was just a very uninteresting match and the crowd couldn’t have cared less. I personally think that being thrown into small feuds with people like Tamina, Naomi, and Alicia Fox (I love Naomi and Fox and don’t have anything against Tamina but none of them were important at all at this point) hurt her a lot and contributed to her quick fall to irrelevance. Many people think that when a wrestler wins a title immediately it doesn’t allow them to connect with the fans and I think that is to an extent true but can be fixed if they’re put into a good feud. Paige debuted and the potential for a feud with AJ was there (I didn’t want to see it as I can’t stand Lee, but it would’ve been much more interesting than the feuds she did have) but AJ went on one of her little breaks that she loved taking in 2014 and for some reason WWE allowed. Because of this Paige was forced to feud with irrelevant people because the Bellas were busy starting their feud with Stephanie and WWE hadn’t really built up anyone else to be important. Paige being thrown into feuds with irrelevant people after winning the title immediately was the start of her downfall.

Paige vs Naomi Money in the Bank 2014:

I actually was looking forward to this match as I am a big fan of Naomi. If I remember correctly there was little build to this match, which would explain why the crowd didn’t really seem to care. In the beginning it seemed like it could’ve ended up being a pretty good match, with Naomi hitting a flying crossbody and a couple other cool moves. The rest of the match was kind of dull as they did a ton of pinning combinations. Paige then locked in a submission for a pretty long time. There was a lot of weird stuff in this match. First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people roll out of the ring while maintaining a lockup and then continue it while on the outside. Then there was just some weird botches including one of Paige’s routine moves just not looking right early on. Then there was a spot where Paige was going for a superplex and they both just fell off the ropes. A lot of people interpreted it as a botch but it seemed to be on purpose to me. Regardless it looked odd. One thing that really stuck out to me was Paige kicking out of Naomi’s finisher, the Rear View. It just seemed weird for there to be a finisher kickout in the first PPV match of a feud that didn’t continue after this. I was more impressed with Naomi in this match than Paige, which probably isn’t good considering this was one of her first PPV matches. Another disappointing performance from Paige here.

Paige vs AJ Lee Summerslam 2014:

This was an alright match, a little bit short and kind of slow but it was probably a slight step up from her previous main roster PPV matches. The attempted Paige Turner into the Black Widow into the RamPaige was cool. Paige was definitely more vicious in her offense here as she was working as a heel. She is a thousand times better as a heel as it allows her to show off her brutality, which is pretty much what is meant to separate her from the other girls when it comes to in ring style.

Paige vs Nikki Bella:

This match was weird because after watching Paige in FCW and NXT, to me her biggest appeal was that she was more aggressive and dominant in her offense than anyone on the main roster. But then in this match, Nikki is doing powerbombs and alabama slams and throwing her against the barricade and it was weird to see her as almost the underdog. Paige did a LOT of superkicks (yawn) and didn’t have a very good performance. The most noticeable botch/weird thing was when Paige like rolled over Nikki for a rollup but then just didn’t roll her up.

Paige vs Nikki Bella vs Naomi Elimination Chamber 2015:

I remembered this being a pretty rough match and it was. There were just a lot of awkward or just plain botched spots, most notably when Nikki went to do her kick off the middle rope, Naomi got out of the way and it seemed Paige was supposed to be hit by it but Paige wasn’t there so Nikki just fell and Paige flung herself across the ring. She had very little offense and almost all of the offense she did have was those superkicks she used to do constantly (I haven’t seen her much in recent months so I don’t know if she still does it). I remember reading an interview where she said something like “I don’t even do moves anymore I just do kicks” and it was very accurate. At least shes self aware? Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. One of her most unmotivated performances definitely.

Paige vs Charlotte Survivor Series 2015:

This match had no right to go nearly as long as it did. Paige did a ton of submissions, some creative and cool some not so much. But there were way too many submissions considering Paige’s comment about Charlotte’s brother in the buildup for this match. Both women struggled trying to have a singles match of this length, with both of their movesets being shown to be very shallow. Considering what the match was based around you’d think it would be like a brawl, but the parts where they were just fighting dragged and produced some awkward encounters. The spear off the barricade was one of the most embarrassingly weak moves I’ve ever seen. Both women did a good job at screaming as much as they possibly could but maybe if they put that energy into making their moves look like…moves it would have been a better match. While watching Paige’s NXT run I questioned whether her moveset was deep enough to put on matches that were longer than a few minutes, and this match shows why I thought that. At this point I began to question if Paige was even trying anymore.

Factors that led to the downfall

There a variety of factors that led to Paige going from being looked at as the future of womens wrestling in WWE to pretty much being just another girl on the roster. Paige being given the Divas Championship on her first night on the main roster didn’t allow for the fans to connect with her on the level that they could have. Yes, she did get a big reaction when she won the title and I remember the internet going crazy at the time but within a few months she was getting little to no reactions from the live crowds and people had already stopped caring about her. In the moment the badass girl from NXT coming in and taking the title from the woman who had tyrannically ruled over the division for 295 days was a great moment but in the end people didn’t truly care about Paige because they had no reason to. Now WWE can somewhat get away with not truly building up a person’s character when they come to the main roster but it wasn’t like it is now, most of the people in the live crowds didn’t know a lot or anything about NXT then. The problem of the crowds not caring about Paige could’ve been solved with an awesome feud between Paige and AJ, who people predicted would be the Trish and Lita of the modern generation, but their feud was put on hold by AJ taking one of her breaks after losing the championship, and due to the Bellas being busy and nobody else being built up, Paige was forced to defend the championship on Pay Per View against people who the crowd didn’t really have any reason to care about. When AJ finally did come back, the booking of the feud was just bad, the ‘frenemy’ thing was confusing and the matches were disappointing. As Paige got comfortable on the main roster, it seems she started to care less. She has gotten more opportunities to wrestle as a challenger on PPV than any woman I’ve ever seen and few of these matches were anything special. People blame Total Divas for her loss of status in WWE but I don’t see how there is any correlation. If Total Divas is why Paige stopped looking motivated and why WWE failed in booking her in the first six to eight months of her main roster career, then sure, blame Total Divas. Paige’s appeal was always that she was more aggressive and unique than the other divas but aside from her look she hasn’t really gotten the opportunity to show how she is unique. I remember Nikki on commentary one time made a comment about how Paige isn’t really any different from any of the other girls and while that was an in character comment she wasn’t wrong. WWE made little effort to separate Paige from the other women on the roster. People had extremely high expectations going into Paige’s main roster run due to the matches she put on in NXT with Natalya and Emma but if you ignore those matches, you can see that in FCW, NXT, or WWE she never really had a very deep moveset and it seems it’s only diminished as she continues to wrestle on the main roster. I love Paige and hope that one day she’ll prove this all wrong.