Kelani Jordan took one look at Raquel Rodriguez and Lola Vice squaring up in the middle of the ring and made what might have been the most intelligent tactical decision of the entire match.
She left.
Not dramatically. Not after being battered through a barricade or launched over the ropes.
Jordan simply slipped outside and allowed the other two women to get acquainted.
Fair enough.
This was already a strange little match before anyone threw a punch.
Here was Lola Vice, the shiny new addition to Monday Night Raw, making her first proper appearance as a member of the roster. Across from her stood Women’s Intercontinental Champion Raquel Rodriguez.
And then there was Jordan.
The NXT Women’s Champion.
On Raw.
Competing for Money in the Bank.
Right.
WWE’s brands have always possessed the structural integrity of wet cardboard whenever the company decides something interesting might happen, but even by those standards, seeing the reigning NXT champion wander onto Raw and immediately enter a major main-roster qualifying match felt unusual.
It also turned out to be rather fun.
Because while this was officially Lola Vice’s introduction to Monday nights, Jordan spent a considerable chunk of its 10 minutes and 10 seconds quietly suggesting WWE might have another problem on its hands.
She’s ridiculously good.
Kelani Jordan Decides She’ll Join Us After All
Eventually, Jordan returned from her brief expedition outside the ring.
By then, Vice and Rodriguez had established exactly what their portion of the match was going to look like.
Rodriguez had the obvious power advantage. Vice had absolutely no intention of trying to match it conventionally.
Instead came the strikes.
Kicks, combinations and the MMA-derived offence that immediately distinguishes Vice from most of WWE’s women’s roster. There is a snap to her movements that makes everything feel slightly less choreographed. You can see where the Bellator experience and Taekwondo background fit into the wrestler WWE has built around it.
Rodriguez provided a useful opponent for that introduction because she is enormous by comparison.
She could absorb Vice’s offence and then simply grab her.
That was when Jordan decided she’d seen enough.
In she came.
And suddenly the match changed.
Jordan’s great strength isn’t merely that she can perform athletic wrestling moves. WWE has plenty of people capable of spectacular gymnastics.
It is how naturally she moves between them.
Something gets countered and she flows into the next movement. Somebody catches her and she twists elsewhere. A sequence appears to have reached its conclusion and Jordan somehow discovers another direction for it to travel.
Corey Graves described her athleticism as potentially unmatched.
There were moments here when that didn’t feel particularly hyperbolic.
Her springboard moonsault onto Rodriguez was gorgeous.
More importantly, it didn’t exist in isolation as the obligatory spectacular move everyone waits around to receive. Jordan’s athleticism became part of the rhythm of the match.
Vice struck.
Rodriguez stopped people.
Jordan escaped them.
Three very different wrestlers. Three very obvious roles.
Simple wrestling architecture usually works.
Raquel Rodriguez Is a Very Large Problem
Eventually, Lola and Kelani reached the same conclusion.
Perhaps they should stop fighting each other for a moment and deal with the enormous woman.
So the two NXT rivals briefly became allies.
There is always something wonderfully primitive about the triple threat temporary alliance. Two wrestlers silently acknowledge that the third is becoming inconvenient, cooperate for approximately eight seconds and then immediately remember they hate one another.
Vice and Jordan doubled up on Rodriguez.
It worked.
For a bit.
Then Rodriguez reminded everyone why she was the Women’s Intercontinental Champion.
A chop stopped Vice. Power took care of the rest. Before long, Rodriguez was launching herself from the apron with a crossbody and flattening both opponents on the floor.
That was the important thing about Rodriguez’s involvement.
She wasn’t simply there as the established wrestler tasked with helping the new arrivals look impressive.
She was the obstacle.
Vice and Jordan could be quicker. They could combine. They could counter her offence.
But neither could simply overpower her.
That dynamic gave the match something to constantly return to whenever the speed threatened to become meaningless movement.
Raquel Rodriguez is here.
Raquel Rodriguez is very large.
What are you going to do about it?
Booty Bumps Are Wrestling, Deal With It
Lola Vice had an answer.
Booty bumps.
Lots of them.
When you have glutes, why not. Vaquer does too.
Vice managed to arrange both Rodriguez and Jordan in opposite corners and ran between them delivering her signature hip attacks.
Is it ridiculous?
Yes.
Does Vice possess the glute muscles necessary to make repeatedly smashing people with her backside look vaguely plausible as offence?
Also yes.
Why not?
Professional wrestling has survived Irish whips, People’s Elbows, Cobra strikes and wrestlers performing moonsaults while their opponents politely remain horizontal for several seconds.
We can survive the booty bump.
More importantly, this was the point where the match increasingly became a showcase for Vice without turning everybody else into furniture.
That distinction matters.
Her arrival on Raw has clearly been positioned as significant. Graves was practically writing the promotional material himself on commentary, promising Vice would make “a lot of noise and even bigger waves” on Monday nights.
But WWE didn’t need Rodriguez and Jordan to suddenly become incompetent to demonstrate it.
Instead, Vice looked dangerous because she survived alongside them.
There is a difference.
Can We Have Kelani Jordan vs. Raquel Rodriguez, Please?
Then came perhaps the most interesting tease of the match.
Jordan went aerial against Rodriguez.
Rodriguez caught her.
Powerbomb incoming.
Except Jordan reversed it.
Of course she did.
Jordan spent half this match behaving as though gravity was merely a strongly worded recommendation.
The sequence produced another close two-count and, more importantly, made me want something WWE wasn’t actually advertising.
Kelani Jordan against Raquel Rodriguez.
Just give them 15 minutes.
Jordan’s athleticism against Rodriguez’s power is such an obvious wrestling combination that you can practically see the match assembling itself.
Jordan as the babyface trying increasingly elaborate ways to topple Rodriguez would work perfectly.
Alternatively, turn Jordan heel and stick her in Judgment Day.
Whatever.
I’ll take either.
That’s probably the strongest compliment this qualifier can receive. It was supposed to determine another entrant in Money in the Bank, yet it created several combinations I wanted to watch again.
Vice against Jordan already has history.
Vice against Rodriguez works because of the stylistic contrast.
Jordan against Rodriguez might be the most interesting of all.
And they hadn’t even reached the best sequence yet.
Everyone Starts Trying to Kill Each Other
The final few minutes accelerated considerably.
Jordan landed a huge frog splash on Rodriguez and appeared to have her beaten.
Vice arrived with a spinning kick before the referee could count three.
Jordan later attempted another aerial attack, only for Vice to catch her in mid-air and somehow convert the whole thing into a triangle choke.
Lovely.
Then Rodriguez came flying down from the top rope with a senton and crushed the submission attempt.
Also lovely.
This was exactly what a 10-minute television triple threat should be.
Nobody needed to spend four minutes pretending they had forgotten the third participant existed. The match constantly used the extra body.
One wrestler produced something impressive.
Another ruined it.
The third reappeared.
Repeat.
It sounds simple because it is simple.
That doesn’t make it easy.
By the closing moments, Rodriguez appeared ready to impose some order on everything.
She grabbed Vice.
Tejana Bomb.
Here we go.
Vice escaped into a rear-naked choke.
Rodriguez powered free.
Then came the big boot.
Vice ducked.
Jordan, unfortunately, happened to be standing behind her.
WHACK.
The NXT Women’s Champion went tumbling from the apron.
Rodriguez’s leg became awkwardly caught across the top rope.
Vice saw it.
One roll-up.
One.
Two.
Three.
Wait, that’s it?
Lola Vice Is Going to Money in the Bank
It was wonderfully abrupt.
Not a huge finisher. Not an elaborate sequence requiring everyone to stand in precisely the correct place. Not even the decisive knockout strike that WWE could easily have used to establish Vice immediately.
She nicked it.
And that’s better.
Lola Vice defeated the Women’s Intercontinental Champion on her first night wrestling as a proper member of the Raw roster, but she didn’t suddenly become stronger than Raquel Rodriguez.
Rodriguez got caught.
Kelani Jordan didn’t lose at all.
Everybody leaves with something.
Rodriguez can reasonably claim Vice escaped with the victory after her own big boot accidentally wiped Jordan out and left her tangled against the ropes.
Jordan can reasonably point out that she was never pinned and had come within fractions of a second of beating Rodriguez herself.
Vice?
Vice doesn’t need an explanation.
She’s going to Money in the Bank.
Sol Ruca had been the only woman qualified before this match.
Now she has company.
And that might be the larger story WWE was quietly telling here.
This match contained an established main-roster champion, yet so much of its energy came from two women associated primarily with NXT.
Jordan looked phenomenal.
Vice looked completely comfortable.
Neither seemed remotely out of place wrestling on Raw in front of 49,017 people in Mexico City.
Perhaps that explains why the whole NXT-champion-competing-on-Raw thing ultimately bothered me considerably less by the end than it did at the beginning.
The brands might make increasingly little sense.
The wrestlers do.
Kelani Jordan came to Raw and looked like somebody who should probably be appearing there considerably more often.
Lola Vice came to Raw and won.
Sometimes that’s enough of an introduction.
Vice City is going to New Orleans.
