WWE’s Women’s Evolution (if you could call it that at this point...) passed a new milestone in Las Vegas as Kairi Sane prevailed against former UFC fighter Shayna Baszler to clinch victory in the first-ever Mae Young Classic.
This is going to be a rather short and sweet write-up as there's not much to talk about here.
The match took place immediately following the end of SmackDown! Live following a brief intermission to change out the ring and get straight into this match. I didn't bother watching the Red Carpet special before SmackDown! Live, but I suggest checking it out for various interviews with the cast of Netflix's GLOW, Stephanie McMahon, Dana Warrior, and various women from the current WWE roster on their thoughts on this tournament, hosted by Hall of Famer Alundra Blayze (she'll always be Madusa to me, dammit).
As for this match, I thought it was pretty straight forward and to the point. I'm glad that WWE made the right call here in two occasions - one for not turning this final into a gimmicked spectacle to setup that Horsewomen vs Horsewomen match that has been leaving a bad blimish on this tournament and secondly, letting Kairi Sane actually win this tournament. I won't lie, there was a point at the end where I thought Shayna was going to reach up and pull Kairi Sane back into the Rear Naked Choke after the last Diving Elbow Drop, but she sold her ailing ribs enough to make it believable that she didn't have anything left to fight back with after the second one. Sane was the better choice to win this thing from the get-go and I was dreading that WWE would give Shayna the win in hopes to brown nose Ronda Rousey and her crew to sign WWE contracts.
To say that Shayna Baszler was the least experienced of the two in these finals, WWE definitely did a great job of hiding her lack of experience. She didn't do anything outside of her comfort zone and worked with Sane to keep the match pretty simple. They didn't even have to do a dive or a flip to get people hyped about this thing. There was at least one moment during the match when Shayna had the Rear Naked Choke applied was when I thought we were going to get a wardrobe malfunction on Sane from how Shayna had the hold applied. Sane might want to slightly modify her ring gear as an added precaution in the near-future.
From the reports going around, WWE made a last second decision to make Kairi Sane the winner instead of Shayna Baszler, who surprisingly hasn't signed with them as of this posting. It looks like they had another Kota Ibushi situation on their hands like they did during the Cruiserweight Classic last year. They wanted to name him the winner, but went with TJ Perkins at the last second when he refused to sign with them. After seeing the current state of cruiserweight division, I bet he's singing the praises to the heavens that he didn't take them up on that offer... That's definitely a discussion for another day for sure.
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| The late Macho Man Randy Savage would definitely approve of the InSane Elbow Drop. |
In terms of the overall impact and response of this tournament, I think that it was a milestone for WWE in terms of women's wrestling, but I felt that it pales in comparison to the hype that the Cruiserweight Classic or even the UK Championship Tournament brought to the table. That being said, this was still an experiment worth executing. Even if WWE doesn't hire all of these women in this tournament (FYI a lot of them were signed prior to the start of this tournament, including Dakota Kai, Rhea Ripley, Abbey Laith, Bianca Belair, Sage Beckett, Zeda, Reina Gonzales, Kavita Devi, Xia Li, Taynara Conti, Lacey Evans, Sarah Logan, and Kairi Sane) they have already excelled at showing that women's wrestling is alive and kicking, literally. If they do this again, I don't think they need to do 32 women again, especially if they are going to do the Netflix binge-worthy format as 8 hours of wrestling is a bit much to digest on top of WWE's weekly 7+ hours of programming.
Whether those women get signed or not, this is a golden opportunity to show the world what you're made of as a women's wrestler. TNA/Impact Wrestling has been doing this for the past few years now with their annual all-female tournaments and before that, there were ChickFight Tournaments as well (at least up until 2008), highlighting the best the industry had to offer, but weren't the cup of tea that WWE were looking for when Johnny Ace had his eye on hiring strictly lingerie models. It's great to see them have a change of heart roughly two decades later and we're seeing a lot of these ladies getting a chance to shine on a mainstream level of exposure for the first time for a lot of them, especially for veterans like Kairi Sane (Hojo) and Mercedes Martinez; while others like Piper Niven (Viper), Toni Storm, Santana Garrett, Mia Yim, Candice LaRae, Nicole Savoy, and Jazzy Gabert have been on fire on the independent scene lately and people have been dying to see them compete in a WWE ring.
It was announced that Kairi Sane will challenge for the vacant NXT Women's Championship at the next TakeOver event in November, but no idea who her opponent is going to be (my best guess is Ember Moon or Nikki Cross/Ruby Riot, pick one). They should have an answer to that question for the next set of NXT tapings going on this week anyway. I don't think it would be a good idea to give the title to Sane right away like this, and I doubt they will as I'm sure that Triple H would have handed the title to her at the end of this tournament. Besides, NXT needs a break from another Japanese sensation dominates their women's division for another record breaking 500+ days.
Don't worry, Kairi Sane's going shine in WWE and she knows better than anyone that the sky's the limit.
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