Blake Monroe handing Nick Aldis a bag containing her own teeth is probably the point at which we can officially say the disagreement with Giulia has escalated.
Wrestling has always had a slightly strange relationship with workplace grievances. In most jobs, a colleague knocking your teeth out would involve HR, several meetings, and somebody quietly asking whether you wanted the police involved. On SmackDown, Monroe presented the evidence to her general manager and essentially demanded another opportunity to fight the woman responsible.
Which is one way of looking at employee welfare.
More importantly, though, Blake Monroe versus Giulia now feels like a rivalry with depth, encouraging the audience to care about their characters’ journeys.
That has not always been true of Giulia on SmackDown.
Her main roster run has been frustrating precisely because anyone familiar with her work knows what WWE actually has. NXT understood it rather better. Since arriving on SmackDown, however, Giulia has occasionally felt like Mechagodzilla being purchased at enormous expense and then employed to guard a particularly unimportant warehouse. Yes, technically you are using Mechagodzilla. But perhaps we could find something more interesting for it to do for a wrestler with kaiju energy levels.
The programme with Kiana James had possibilities. James had her corporate scheming, Giulia had the championship, and there was enough personality involved for something substantial to develop.
Then it just sort of stopped.
Kiana moved on. Blake attacked her too. Everyone apparently accepted this as the natural administrative conclusion.
Fortunately, Monroe and Giulia have something their previous programmes lacked.
They genuinely seem to despise each other, which raises the emotional stakes and makes their feud more compelling for fans.
A Rivalry With Some Actual Memory
There is also history here beyond WWE.
Before Blake Monroe became The Glamour, she was Mariah May, wrestling in Stardom as part of Club Venus. Giulia led Donna Del Mondo and operated near the top of the same promotion.
That matters.
Not because WWE needs to spend fifteen minutes explaining Japanese wrestling faction history to an audience in Milwaukee, but because shared history gives their interactions texture. These aren’t two wrestlers who happened to bump into each other beside a television positioned diagonally backstage.
They have existed in the same world before.
Then Monroe arrived on SmackDown behaving as though the women’s division should be grateful she’d bothered turning up at all.
It is an effective character because arrogance works better when there is at least some evidence to back it up. Monroe delayed her televised debut, talked herself up and treated potential opponents as though WWE had accidentally booked her into a regional leisure centre.
Giulia, understandably, was unimpressed.
On 26 June, Monroe attacked her after Giulia’s victory over Kiana James and dropped her with a Gotch-style driver.
By August, Monroe wanted a WWE Women’s Championship opportunity. Giulia interrupted her conversation with Nick Aldis and volunteered to deal with the problem personally.
Good.
Professional wrestling becomes unnecessarily complicated sometimes. Two people disliking each other and wanting to fight remains remarkably effective.
The Match That Wasn’t
Their first advertised match, on 21 August in Toronto, didn’t even start.
Monroe attacked Giulia during her entrance, drove her into the steel steps and hit the Neutraliser before the referee could ring the bell. She then decided the match was beneath her.
Again, irritating. But usefully irritating.
Giulia retaliated backstage the following week, because apparently SmackDown’s backstage area has now become the women’s division equivalent of an unsupervised pub car park.
Then came 4 September.
Before another attempt at the advertised wrestling match, Giulia attacked Monroe backstage, and the fight spilt onto the stage. Giulia hit her Arrivederci running knee directly in the mouth.
This one had consequences.
Monroe suffered a broken tooth and jaw damage requiring oral surgery. A week later, she appeared in a WWE Digital Exclusive and handed Aldis the aforementioned bag of teeth.
It was ridiculous.
It was also quite good.
Small physical objects like a bag containing pieces of your own mouth can create a stronger emotional connection, making grievances feel real to the audience.
You immediately understand the grievance.
Giulia’s response was even better. She argued that Monroe’s pride had kept her from fighting properly before, but losing a tooth had finally given her enough motivation.
Fair enough.
Now they both have a credible reason to want to hurt each other.
That sounds obvious, but wrestling occasionally forgets it.
Now Let Giulia Wrestle
There is one problem.
Can Giulia finally have a proper wrestling match that showcases her skills and builds her reputation among fans?
A proper one.
Bell rings. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Wrestling.
Because Giulia’s aggression is established, we’ve seen the ambushes, knees, backstage fighting, and general aura of someone you probably shouldn’t annoy near a loading bay.
What we haven’t seen enough of on SmackDown is why people got excited about Giulia in the first place.
She is extremely good at professional wrestling.
Her appeal isn’t merely that she looks dangerous. It’s how she builds matches, escalates physicality and makes increasingly unpleasant exchanges feel competitive rather than choreographed.
You can tell us someone is dangerous indefinitely. Eventually they have to demonstrate it between the bells.
That is why the next step should be straightforward: to establish a clear, compelling rivalry through a well-built match.
Blake Monroe returns.
Giulia confronts her.
And this time, somebody actually manages to ring the bloody bell.
Give Them the Match, Then Ruin It
They don’t need a clean finish yet.
In fact, they probably shouldn’t.
Give them enough time to establish what the actual wrestling rivalry looks like. Let Monroe prove she can live with Giulia technically. Let Giulia start dragging the match towards the increasingly physical territory she enjoys.
Then let everything collapse.
A disqualification would work. So would Monroe stealing a win through something suitably obnoxious. Feet on the ropes, handful of tights, an exposed turnbuckle, whatever ancient wrestling technology is currently available.
The important part is that neither woman leaves satisfied.
Then Money in the Bank gives WWE the perfect excuse to make everything significantly more stupid.
Have both qualify.
Now their private feud exists inside a match where everyone else is trying to achieve something important while these two remain preoccupied with destroying each other.
That is excellent wrestling logic because it is also terrible human logic.
A ladder could be sitting beneath the briefcase, an unobstructed route to a future championship match, and Giulia spots Monroe across the ring.
Suddenly none of that matters.
Maybe they fight at the top of the ladder and take each other out.
Maybe somebody gets launched through a stack of tables.
Flaming tables?
Look, once you’ve introduced a bag of human teeth, I’m not going to start demanding restraint.
The essential thing is that their hatred costs both of them something tangible.
That’s when rivalries become memorable. Not when commentators repeatedly tell us two people don’t like each other, but when their behaviour begins overriding common sense.
Winning Money in the Bank should matter enormously.
Wanting to hurt the other person should matter slightly more.
Something Worth Waiting For
For the first time since Giulia arrived on SmackDown, a programme around her feels like it could become more than another temporary arrangement.
Monroe has arrogance, Giulia has resentment, both have history, and now a dental bill somewhere in the background provides documentary evidence.
WWE has already done the difficult part.
It has made the rivalry feel personal.
Now comes the simpler bit.
Ring the bell.
Let two excellent wrestlers wrestle until they remember they hate each other and everything deteriorates from there.
That seems preferable to another month of backstage attacks, digital exclusives and Nick Aldis being handed increasingly disturbing objects by disgruntled employees.
Teeth sit in a bag.
The bell waits for violence.
Ladders come later.
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