Saraya has a narrative to inform… so inform it

No…not that one. Though it’s an excellent one, if the film was a contact of WWE propaganda. We’ll get again to this.

It has been a uncommon prevalence that after an AEW present, the ladies’s division was creating essentially the most buzz. It’s even rarer after an enormous AEW present, which Grand Slam most definitely is, because it’s most likely their largest non-PPV present on the calendar. In reality, you’d be hard-pressed to suppose it has ever occurred. The solely different contender was the primary match between Britt Baker and Thunder Rosa, which occurred in the course of the pandemic and is getting a bit small within the rearview mirror now. Maybe you might argue the backstage drama surrounding Rosa, however in fact, that bought drowned out by the backstage drama of the dudes.

But that’s been about it. Like all the opposite failings of AEW’s dealing with of the ladies’s division, the shortage of with the ability to create any flash or magnetism, or eager to, is perhaps its largest. Because all the opposite points get a complete lot simpler to resolve when individuals actually wish to see what occurs subsequent. AEW has not often supplied the “happens” or the “next.”

That’s not the case now.

The largest story to come back out of Grand Slam final evening was the return of Saraya (Paige in WWE). Saraya is a wattage that the AEW girls’s division hasn’t ever come near having. Ruby Soho was a cherished get when she arrived, however within the “underused talent in New York” trend. She was by no means a champion in NXT or WWE. Athena was in the identical mildew, although she held the NXT title for some time. Toni Storm, similar case. Unquestionably proficient, all might have the ladies’s division in AEW constructed round them with a bit time, a bit endurance, and a bit work. But these are three issues that Tony Khan has by no means demonstrated he’s going to place forth for the ladies.

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Saraya is as plug and play because it will get…no less than we hope so. Because the massive matzo ball hanging on the market, and one of many huge causes her look final evening was so stunning, is her neck. There was a time when it wasn’t thought to have way more stability than jack cheese. And nonetheless, nobody is admittedly certain, besides we assume (hope?) Saraya herself, Khan, and no matter docs every had checked out it. She definitely seems to be coming again as a wrestler. She repeatedly mentioned prior to now that’s what she needed to do, and right here we’re. It may result in followers watching her first few matches by way of their fingers, however that’s no totally different than followers have needed to do with Bryan Danielson, Edge, or Christian Cage. And she’s considerably youthful than any of these was after they returned from their accidents.

Saraya comes with a pedigree unmatched by anybody on the AEW girls’s roster, and actually, there are few males who might declare as a lot as she will. Because they didn’t truly flip the business on its head, which Saraya (then Paige) did. Most followers will inform you the ladies’s revolution in WWE and NXT began with Saraya’s matches with Emma in NXT, demonstrating to everybody simply what the ladies within the division had been able to. The Four Horsewomen got here after that. Those 4 might have blown open the trail, however the opening was created by Saraya.

She introduced that to the primary roster, famously profitable the ladies’s title the evening after WrestleMania in New Orleans in her first ever match in WWE. She remains to be seen because the pivot level for WWE to take the ladies’s division as severely because it did the boys’s. She was from a wrestling household, in any case. You might need heard about it. A yr later, Sasha, Becky, and Charlotte had been up, and the remainder.

Adding to the depth and feeling of Saraya’s return is that she by no means hit the heights that Sasha or Charlotte or Becky have, and plenty of that’s all the way down to her. There’s a redemption story that AEW doesn’t need to do something with and will simply let play out. Before her retirement, Saraya’s story was a messy one, with drug and alcohol abuse, abusive boyfriends (which could nonetheless be one thing of a problem), leaked intercourse tapes, and wavering dedication to the enterprise. It’s type of laborious to imagine she’s nonetheless solely 30 with how a lot she has packed in, each good and dangerous, in her profession.

And AEW definitely isn’t afraid of a redemption arc. One needn’t look any additional than its present champ Jon Moxley, who has had the very best yr of his profession contemporary out of rehab for a ingesting downside. Saraya making it again to the ring simply bodily is a narrative in itself. Pile every little thing else on high of it and it couldn’t be any simpler to get followers on her facet (which judging by the massive pop when she appeared final evening, they already are).

Saraya has that reference to followers as a result of not like a lot of the girls wrestlers on the time of her ascent, she didn’t really feel constructed from one thing else. She was a real wrestler, raised in it, who cherished it, not imported from another place and made up. Everything that’s occurred since, and now her hopeful overcoming of all of it, solely makes her extra human. That’s somebody you may construct a division round.

All AEW has to do is wish to. What the ladies’s division has badly wanted is storylines that aren’t only a title match — they usually’ve so not often gotten them. It’s been since that first Rosa and Baker match that any girls’s feud not round a title felt very important. While Saraya shouldn’t be used to sideline Storm, the present champ, she definitely offers a second line of storytelling as she begins her profession once more, and may purchase a while for others like Storm or Athena or whoever else to actually nail down their character.

There are myriad potentialities right here, together with the hard-to-miss certainly one of Saraya lastly creating the everlasting fissure between Jamie Hayter and Baker that ought to have occurred already. It could be a boon if Saraya had been a whole ace on the mic, which she’s not fairly. But her star energy will cowl up most if not all of what she lacks, one thing maybe no different lady on the AEW roster can say. Fans will get pleasure from having Saraya on the display screen it doesn’t matter what, she’s simply that magnetic.

This is hardly the primary time followers have hoped {that a} new daybreak is upon the ladies’s division. And it simply hasn’t ever been. But they honestly haven’t had somebody like Saraya to work with earlier than. And room could also be opening up. For weeks there have been rumors that AEW goes to get one other present on TV. It could possibly be the long-awaited Ring of Honor present, which might unlock all of the TV time that’s been getting on Dynamite and Rampage. It could possibly be a girls’s-exclusive present, as has been whispered. However it really works out, there’s a gap right here.

It isn’t that tough. All it takes is just sending Saraya on the market usually. If she’s something like she was, she’ll do the remainder.