Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley are the new WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions.
There. That happened.
On the October 9 edition of WWE SmackDown in Lafayette, Louisiana, Paxley pinned Fallon Henley after the Cemetery Drive to end Fatal Influence’s 83-day reign with the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship. Alexa Bliss, drafted into the match after Charlotte Flair was ruled unable to compete, is now a five-time champion. Paxley has her first main-roster title.
It was fine.
And perhaps that is the problem.
I watched this match while dealing with some deeply weird stuff with my employer, so emotionally I was already operating somewhere between “please give me something nice” and “I know exactly how this sort of thing ends”.
Then Fatal Influence walked out.
Oh, for God’s sake.
Please don’t do this to me.
Fatal Influence Looked Like Champions
Before we get into the existential crisis, we need to observe proper standards.
Fatal Influence looked fantastic.
Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid came out in gold championship gear, which is precisely how wrestling champions should present themselves. If you possess a belt made largely of gold and your outfit does not acknowledge this fact, what are we even doing here?
There are standards.
Lainey Reid also arrived with the balayage operating at frankly unreasonable levels.
Again, standards.
Jacy Jayne had been banned from ringside, leaving Henley and Reid to defend the championships themselves. The restriction was part of a wider ruling keeping the assorted interested parties away from the match after Charlotte Flair was taken out backstage and Alexa Bliss replaced her.
That immediately changed the texture of things.
Fatal Influence normally operate as a unit. Jayne is the gravitational centre of the stable, while Henley and Reid have increasingly developed into a proper tag team around her. Remove Jayne and suddenly we get to see how much of this works when the champions have to solve their own problems.
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
Henley hit a lovely diving takedown early on, while Paxley brought considerably more power and athleticism than somebody unfamiliar with her NXT work might have expected.
Paxley is an unusual wrestler in that respect. There is the gothic presentation and general sense that she probably owns several dolls you would politely decline to be left alone with, but underneath that is a former competitive powerlifter who can genuinely move.
WWE’s own presentation can occasionally disguise how absurdly athletic she is.
Here, it didn’t.
Tatum Paxley and Lainey Reid Just Work Together
One sequence particularly got me.
Paxley was outside the ring and jumped onto the apron, apparently ready to re-enter. Henley grabbed her leg and stopped her progress.
Simple.
Effective.
Then Reid appeared.
SUPERKICK.
Right in Paxley’s face.
Beautiful.
That is exactly the sort of small tag-team sequence I want from Fatal Influence. Henley creates the opening, Reid immediately understands what is happening and they turn a mundane transition back into the ring into an attack.
The champions repeatedly isolated Paxley during the match, using frequent tags, double-team offence and those little pieces of interference that make wrestling heels so wonderfully irritating.
And somewhere around here, Lainey Reid discovered the television camera.
This was important.
Reid looked directly towards it and posed with the approximate energy of someone saying:
Look at this physique.
We are Lainey.
You are fabulous.
Perhaps she was actually bragging about her wrestling. It doesn’t matter.
We must occasionally recognise greatness when it wanders into frame.
Lainey Reid does not walk among us. She hovers perhaps four inches above ordinary ground, sustained by professional wrestling ability, excellent hair and the sort of confidence usually associated with people who have recently discovered they look fantastic in 4K.
Too much praise?
Find another blog.
There are thousands of them.
Alexa Bliss Does Alexa Bliss Things
Eventually Alexa Bliss got involved properly.
And this is where the result becomes difficult to criticise in isolation.
Bliss is enormously experienced. Paxley is one of the more interesting wrestlers to come through NXT. Pairing them together makes obvious narrative sense because Paxley has openly been presented as somebody influenced by Bliss.
There is something genuinely nice about that.
Paxley went from facing Bliss in NXT to winning championship gold alongside her. Bliss, meanwhile, claimed her fifth WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship with a fourth different partner.
That is a proper little wrestling circle completing itself.
Bliss came in and hit something resembling Natural Selection on Reid for a near fall before Henley returned.
Fatal Influence then produced a lovely double-team flapjack and flipping thing.
Again, these things matter.
Tag-team wrestling should look different from two singles wrestlers politely taking turns. Henley and Reid increasingly look like people who understand where the other one is going to be.
Then came possibly my favourite visual of the match.
Reid was hanging face-down across the ropes when suddenly Paxley’s purple boot came flying into frame and smashed into her with the sort of motion historically reserved for Rob Van Dam deciding somebody’s dental work was too orderly.
Incredible.
Then the Referee Decided Rules Apparently Matter
Paxley became legal and attempted a 450 splash.
Henley moved.
Somehow Paxley landed on her feet.
Again: former powerlifter. Apparently gravity is negotiable.
Henley attacked and eventually managed to get Paxley down for a pin. Reid reached from the apron and grabbed Henley’s hand, giving her extra leverage.
One.
Two.
Three?
No.
The referee saw it.
Excuse me?
Since when are WWE referees observing things?
I was under the impression these people were decorative accessories designed primarily to become distracted by someone standing approximately seven feet away.
Apparently not.
The official caught Reid providing the illegal leverage and stopped counting.
Outrageous professionalism.
That opened the door.
Bliss hit Sister Abigail on Reid outside the ring. Henley, suddenly without her partner, turned back towards Paxley.
Cemetery Drive.
One.
Two.
Three.
New champions.
Fatal Influence had lost the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship after 83 days.
And I sat there thinking:
Right.
Okay.
Now what?
This Is Where WWE Needs to Convince Me
I don’t dislike Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley winning the championships.
That needs to be clear.
Bliss is a five-time tag champion and one of WWE’s most established women’s wrestlers. Paxley is exciting, weird, powerful and increasingly comfortable on the main roster.
There is a perfectly respectable championship team sitting right there.
What I don’t know is why Fatal Influence needed to lose the belts now.
Those are two different questions.
Henley and Reid won the championships in July and have gradually become more convincing as a pairing. Reid in particular feels like she is accelerating every time WWE gives her another significant television match.
The obvious temptation is to treat a championship loss as WWE lowering somebody’s stock.
It doesn’t have to mean that.
There are several interesting places this could go.
Perhaps Fatal Influence regain the championships quickly.
Perhaps Henley and Reid losing without Jayne at ringside becomes important.
Perhaps Jayne blames them.
Perhaps they blame her.
Perhaps this is the first tiny fracture in Fatal Influence.
Perhaps WWE simply wants Bliss and Paxley holding the championships because their strange mentor-and-protégé relationship has somewhere interesting to go.
There is even Charlotte Flair sitting in the background.
She was originally supposed to challenge alongside Paxley. Instead, she was removed from the match, Bliss took her place and now Bliss and Paxley are champions.
Fatal Influence Losing Isn’t the Problem
Championships have to change hands.
Wrestlers we like have to lose.
Otherwise wrestling becomes incredibly boring.
I don’t need Fatal Influence to hold those championships until the sun burns out simply because Lainey Reid occasionally looks into a television camera and temporarily convinces me professional wrestling has achieved its final form.
Fatal Influence entered SmackDown looking like champions. Henley and Reid wrestled like an established tag team. They cheated intelligently. They controlled Paxley for stretches. They had the match won until the referee caught their leverage.
Now do something with it.
Because Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley becoming champions can absolutely work. There is history between them, there is an obvious emotional hook and there is enough contrast between veteran Bliss and chaotic Paxley to make the partnership interesting.
Fatal Influence can also survive losing the championships.
They might even become more interesting because of it.
But WWE now has several pieces sitting on the board: Bliss, Paxley, Flair, Henley, Reid and Jacy Jayne.
Moving one of them should affect the others.
That is what I want to see.
Otherwise this becomes another women’s tag title change where everybody celebrates, somebody gets a nice photograph holding a belt and three weeks later we are trying to remember why the previous champions lost them.
Please don’t do that.
Fatal Influence have become too interesting for that.
And Lainey Reid’s balayage deserves better.
The match itself?
Fine.
Some really good sequences. Paxley and Reid have obvious chemistry. Henley continues to be quietly excellent. Bliss knows exactly what she is doing. The finish made sense.
Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley are WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions.
Congratulations to them.
