Giulia was already sitting on the turnbuckle when SmackDown returned to her.
That annoyed me more than it probably should have.
After weeks of Blake Monroe attacking Giulia, Giulia attacking Blake Monroe, matches failing actually to become matches and, at one point, Monroe presenting her own extracted teeth to Nick Aldis, October 2 was finally supposed to be the night. Blake Monroe versus Giulia. An actual wrestling match. Bell and everything.
So naturally, WWE cut Giulia’s entrance.
It got stranger when Michael Cole explained that, as of October 1, Netflix had become the home of most WWE programming in Japan. This announcement was made while one of WWE’s most recognisable Japanese stars was sitting silently on a turnbuckle because television viewers had apparently not needed to see her entrance.
Excellent timing.
Giulia looked furious, although presumably that was because she wanted to hurt Blake Monroe rather than because somebody in the production truck had shaved thirty seconds off her presentation.
Probably.
Blake Monroe Understands This Completely
Monroe, meanwhile, got to make an entrance.
And she was magnificent.
A young fan reached out for a high-five. Monroe appeared to oblige, then withdrew her hand at the final moment. It was petty, unnecessary and therefore perfect. She followed it with that polished little wink towards the camera, looking completely satisfied with herself.
There are complicated ways of establishing a heel character. There is also disappointing a child.
Both work.
Visually, this was also an absurdly good pairing. Giulia wore dark blue beneath platinum-blonde hair, all cold edges and barely concealed violence. Monroe arrived in glamorous pink, looking somewhere between high society and Princess Peach if Princess Peach had recently started headbutting people.
That contrast matters because wrestling is visual theatre before anyone starts pretending otherwise. Monroe looks expensive. Giulia looks dangerous.
Then they start hitting each other, and both descriptions remain accurate.
This was Monroe’s official SmackDown in-ring debut after months on the roster, during which the rivalry had consisted largely of sneak attacks, backstage fights, and scheduled matches that never properly started. That made Corey Graves’ suggestion that this mark’s inclusion was all the more alarming.
Conclusion?
It had barely begun.
Wrestling has developed a strange habit of treating the build towards a match as though the match itself is the destination rather than another part of the story. Giulia and Monroe had spent months orbiting one another without being allowed enough uninterrupted ring time to establish what their rivalry actually looked like once a referee rang the bell.
One match should not settle that.
Especially not this one.
Finally, They Hit Each Other… in a Ring
Thankfully, once the bell rang, the wrestlers themselves understood the assignment.
Monroe immediately started laying in stern kicks with Giulia trapped in the corner before placing her on the top turnbuckle and slapping her viciously across the face.
Good.
No polite feel-out was needed after everything that had happened between them. They had already knocked teeth out and fought around production equipment. A collar-and-elbow tie-up followed by respectful chain wrestling would have felt slightly dishonest.
Monroe attempted a loose hurricanrana that sent Giulia towards the centre of the ring, then followed with a dropkick. Giulia responded with a headlock takedown, heavy kicks and a single-leg dropkick of her own.
Then they went outside.
Monroe rested against the announce table and waited for Giulia to follow. When she did, Blake launched herself into her, driving Giulia backwards into the ring apron. With Giulia groggy on the floor, Monroe followed with a horrible knee to the face.
Then she leaned against the apron.
And winked.
Again.
Blake Monroe could probably reverse into somebody’s parked car, make eye contact, and inspect the damage.
She understands exactly what this character is.
Beautiful Madness
After the advertising break, Giulia began taking control.
A missile dropkick earned two. The Denver crowd started to find its voice. Monroe fought back; Giulia landed a lovely backdrop and eventually attempted the Northern Lights Bomb.
It failed.
Then came the headbutt.
Monroe cracked Giulia with the sort of skull-first offence generally associated with barbarians, Vikings and Rhea Ripley.
The sound was horrible.
Giulia staggered.
Then something changed.
This is where Giulia becomes Giulia.
She sold the impact, but not in a conventional way. There was pain, certainly, but it seemed to awaken something. Her expression twisted into that familiar Beautiful Madness grin, and suddenly she was laughing.
Not because it hadn’t hurt.
Because it had.
There is something wonderfully unsettling about watching a wrestler communicate that distinction without saying anything. Giulia looked at Monroe with the energy of Tyler Durden when he’s hysterically laughing and bleeding while shouting in the face of the tavern owner.
You don’t know where I’ve been.
You don’t know what I’ve survived.
Hit me again.
That is the Giulia WWE needs.
Not another technically excellent wrestler placed into eight-minute television matches. Not another performer whose history gets compressed into commentary exposition. The strange attraction of Giulia has always been that violence seems to make less and less sense around her. Hurt her, and eventually she starts smiling.
Most people regard this as a warning sign.
Wrestling fans cheer.
She hit the Arrivederci knee and then produced something resembling a standing camel clutch before stomping Monroe into the canvas.
Two.
And this, actually, would have been the interesting place to finish it.
Giulia beating Blake Monroe on Monroe’s official SmackDown debut would have been unexpected. It would have given Monroe an immediate reason to become even nastier and told viewers that Giulia remains someone you cannot simply stroll past on your way up the division.
Creative, you might call it.
WWE Creative even has the word available to them.
Instead, we continued.
Wait. That’s It?
Monroe crawled underneath the bottom rope.
Giulia dragged her back by the hair, took her towards the corner and began climbing, seemingly looking for something considerably unpleasant from the top rope.
Monroe escaped.
Then she knocked Giulia’s footing away.
Giulia went face-first into the turnbuckle and post area before falling backwards into the ring.
Monroe covered her.
One.
Two.
Three.
That was it.
I stared at the screen for a moment, waiting for another part of the sequence that apparently wasn’t coming.
Giulia had lost.
Not to Monroe’s Neutraliser. Not after some horrible finishing sequence that established Blake as a genuine threat on SmackDown. Not through interference or a particularly ingenious piece of cheating.
She got knocked off balance, hit the structure and was pinned.
The supplied match account frames this as deliberate protective booking: Giulia took the decisive damage from the ring structure rather than Monroe’s finisher, allowing Monroe the victory without presenting Giulia as simply overpowered.
I understand the theory.
I still hated it.
It is booking assembled with the logic of Mechagodzilla: enormously complicated machinery designed to solve a fairly straightforward problem, stomping around the city. At the same time, everyone congratulates themselves because technically the laser eyes work.
They wanted Monroe to win.
They wanted Giulia protected.
They wanted a clean pin.
They wanted the feud to continue.
They wanted Monroe’s debut victory without Giulia conclusively losing to Monroe’s best offence.
So they constructed a finish that checked every box on the spreadsheet while satisfying almost nothing emotionally.
Which is impressive in its own way.
Give Them More Than This
The frustrating part is that the match itself showed exactly why this rivalry deserves more.
Monroe was nasty.
Giulia was strange.
Their offence looked suitably unpleasant. Their aesthetics worked beautifully together. Monroe’s immaculate glamour against Giulia’s colder, increasingly unhinged presentation gives WWE an immediate visual identity for the rivalry before either woman throws a strike.
And when they did start throwing them, it worked.
The problem was never Giulia or Blake Monroe.
It was eight minutes and an ending engineered to keep every future option open.
Modern wrestling does this quite often. The story becomes less about arriving somewhere and more about maintaining enough exits that nobody has to commit to anything yet.
There was at least evidence afterwards that WWE intends to continue. Monroe confronted Giulia while she was being examined backstage; Giulia responded with a headbutt, and officials had to separate another fight.
Good.
Because this cannot be the conclusion.
These two spent months attacking one another before finally being allowed to wrestle. They have complementary styles, natural chemistry and enough shared history in Japanese wrestling to give the feud considerably more texture than another series of backstage ambushes.
Let them wrestle again.
Give them fifteen minutes.
Give Giulia her entrance while you’re at it.
And next time somebody has to win, perhaps allow one of these extremely talented professional wrestlers actually to beat the other.
The first fight ends.
Glamour smiles, madness laughs.
The machine rolls on.
