There was something wonderfully temporary about the alliance between Lyra Valkyria and Maxxine Dupri.
The bell rang, both women looked at Sol Ruca and apparently reached the same conclusion: get rid of her.
Fair enough.
They jumped Sol together and eventually sent her tumbling outside with a double clothesline, leaving the two heels alone in the ring. It was the sensible thing to do. Sol was probably the favourite, she has developed into one of WWE’s more spectacular wrestlers, and leaving her unattended in a Money in the Bank qualifier feels roughly equivalent to leaving a Labrador unattended beside an open packet of sausages.
Then came the interesting bit.
Lyra and Maxxine looked at each other.
This is one of those tiny wrestling situations I love. Two heels have successfully removed the designated good person and must now somehow continue behaving like heels against one another. There is no innocent party left to bully.
Lyra solved the problem quickly.
She attacked Maxxine.
Of course she did.
The New Lyra Valkyria Is Excellent
I really like this version of Lyra.
The previous version was fine. More than fine, actually. She was an excellent wrestler with a slightly elaborate presentation, lots of visual flourishes and enough feathers knocking around that you half expected David Attenborough to begin whispering over her entrance.
This Lyra is different.
The presentation has been stripped back. Less make-up. Less decoration. Less concern with appearing particularly glamorous.
She looks tired.
Angry.
Slightly feral.
Not a diva. Not really a conventional wrestling villain either. More a woman who has been pushed repeatedly towards the edge and has finally decided that everyone else can come with her.
That came across immediately here.
Sol returned with a rolling senton and seemed particularly interested in getting her hands on Lyra, but Lyra’s response was increasingly physical. Hard kicks, aggression and the general demeanour of someone who has stopped filling out the customer satisfaction survey.
Also, her lats looked impeccable.
These are important details.
Sol Ruca Has Become Very Difficult Not to Like
Sol has grown on me considerably.
There was a point where the extraordinary athleticism was the entire sales pitch. Look what she can do. Look how high she can jump. Look at this ridiculous thing involving ropes and rotations.
Eventually, though, the novelty wears off unless there is a wrestler underneath it.
There increasingly is.
She is also absolutely jacked now. Shoulders, back, abs. She looks less like somebody WWE found at a gymnastics facility and more like somebody specifically engineered for wrestling.
Money in the Bank suits her for obvious reasons.
The entire concept is essentially WWE constructing an enormous climbing frame and asking several professional athletes to find increasingly irresponsible ways of falling off it. Sol Ruca belongs in that environment.
This match demonstrated why.
Once she started building momentum, the pace changed. Maxxine and Lyra could make things unpleasant and physical, but Sol could suddenly stretch the geography of the match.
After the advert break, that became particularly obvious.
Maxxine Dupri Is the Interesting Unknown
Maxxine is slightly different for me because I haven’t watched her wrestle properly for a while.
I have seen the presentation.
The Vision version of Maxxine makes sense aesthetically. Glamorous, ridiculously fit and now positioned with people who consider themselves important. WWE has never exactly struggled to understand that combination.
But could she actually hang with Lyra and Sol?
Yes.
Pretty comfortably, actually.
Maxxine hit a crossbody as the match accelerated before Sol began doing Sol things, including jumping onto the ropes and launching a missile dropkick that caught both opponents.
Then Maxxine got Sol into an electric-chair position.
Lyra broke up the pin.
That was important because Maxxine never felt like the third person WWE had added because triple threats require three people. She remained involved in the architecture of the match.
She also pulled the straps down at one point.
The Kurt Angle and Chad Gable school of announcing that things are about to become unnecessarily serious.
It worked.
Everybody Started Throwing Everything Around
This was where the match became properly fun.
Lyra kicked Maxxine outside.
Sol nearly stole the match.
Maxxine came back and wiped out both opponents.
Sol then managed to use Lyra as a literal stepping stone to kick Maxxine, which is precisely the sort of nonsense triple-threat wrestling should contain.
There is something inherently ridiculous about three-person matches when they work.
Normal wrestling already requires cooperation disguised as attempted violence. Add another person and suddenly everybody is assembling human structures in corners, waiting approximately three seconds for somebody else to arrive and complete the equation.
That happened here.
There was a corner sequence involving all three women which briefly resembled something assembled by IKEA after losing half the instructions.
Sol ended up on the deck.
Maxxine was vulnerable.
Lyra saw her opportunity.
Then Bayley Appeared
Lyra hit Nightwing on Maxxine.
One.
Two.
And then the referee disappeared.
Not spiritually.
Physically.
Bayley had returned and dragged Jessika Carr out of the ring.
It was magnificently petty.
Lyra had done everything correctly. She had survived Sol, put Maxxine down and reached the point where she was approximately one second away from qualifying for Money in the Bank.
Then somebody from another argument arrived and removed the official.
These are the moments wrestling feuds are built around because they require absolutely no explanation afterwards.
Lyra will be furious.
Obviously.
The rivalry with Bayley had not gone away and now it has cost her something tangible. That is far more useful than having them exchange another series of promos explaining that they dislike each other.
Bayley didn’t need to explain anything.
She pulled the referee out.
Message received.
Sol Ruca Is Going to Money in the Bank
The interference left everything scrambled.
Sol took advantage.
Sol Snatcher.
Done.
Sol Ruca qualified for Money in the Bank. It almost makes up for losing the IC title.
I think she was probably the logical choice.
She is over, her offence is designed for the kind of lunacy Money in the Bank encourages, and putting her around ladders immediately creates possibilities that probably make WWE’s medical staff stare quietly into the middle distance.
There is also an obvious story.
Sol doesn’t even need to win the briefcase for the match to benefit her. Give her twenty minutes, several ladders and permission to treat gravity as an administrative suggestion.
That should be enough.
Lyra doesn’t really lose anything either.
She had the match won.
Bayley screwed her.
Now she has something else to be angry about, which suits this version of her wonderfully.
The person I am less sure about is Maxxine.
So What Happens to Maxxine?
Maxxine was good here.
That is almost the problem.
She has improved enormously from the wrestler who initially seemed to be learning everything in public. She became surprisingly over as a face and now appears comfortable enough working heel.
She also has The Vision presentation behind her.
Yet WWE has an enormous women’s roster and only so much television.
Sol has Money in the Bank.
Lyra has Bayley.
Maxxine has…
Well.
The non-card.
A prestigious division.
That would be a shame because this match showed that she can contribute. She wasn’t carried through it. She had her own moments, her own offence and enough presence that several near falls felt plausible.
Part of me thinks somebody like Maxxine would benefit enormously from disappearing to Japan for a while and simply wrestling constantly.
Different opponents. Different rhythms. Less concern about television segments. Just matches.
She would probably come back terrifying.
Instead, there is always the possibility that she spends the next month standing beside The Vision looking extremely athletic while other people argue.
Such is wrestling.
A Good Match That Actually Moved Things Forward
This wasn’t some hidden television classic.
It didn’t need to be.
It was a good, entertaining qualifier that understood what all three women were there to accomplish.
Sol Ruca needed to demonstrate why Money in the Bank is basically designed for her particular collection of physical abilities.
Lyra Valkyria needed another reason to become even more unpleasant.
Maxxine Dupri needed to show that she belonged in a match alongside them.
All three things happened.
Most importantly, the match left something behind.
Sol moves towards Money in the Bank as one of its most naturally suited participants. Lyra now has a very specific reason to want to murder Bayley. Maxxine leaves having wrestled well enough to make her future usage slightly more frustrating.
Which is wrestling in miniature, really.
One woman gets the prize. Another gets a feud. The third gets a vague promise that creative probably has something for her.
Sol climbs towards gold
Lyra carries older wounds
Maxxine waits backstage
doragon sports 