Liv Morgan did not look particularly pleased to be there.
This was important.
Professional wrestling entrances have become increasingly elaborate little ceremonies, all lighting cues, poses, camera marks, and people somehow knowing precisely when to point at themselves. Morgan usually understands this better than most. Normally, there is movement, expression, swagger. On this Monday Night RAW, there was considerably less.
The make-up was restrained. The expression wasn’t.
She looked like a woman who arrived at work expecting an ordinary Monday and was told that, due to circumstances beyond her control, she would now be defending the Women’s World Championship against Becky Lynch.
Fair enough, really.
Stephanie Vaquer‘s ankle injury had removed her from a scheduled number one contender’s match against Lynch, so RAW General Manager Adam Pearce reached for wrestling’s wonderfully elastic administrative rulebook and decided Lynch no longer needed to become number one contender. She could simply challenge Morgan instead.
It was impromptu booking in the best sense. Something had gone wrong, WWE reacted, and suddenly there was a genuinely interesting title match nobody had expected to watch.
Becky arrived.
It’s Becky Lynch. She’s fabulous.
Morgan looked like she wanted to speak to whoever had authorised this nonsense.
Liv Morgan’s Face Told Half the Story
Wrestling has a temptation to explain everything.
Commentators explain motivations. Video packages explain history. Wrestlers explain why they are angry immediately after performing several actions that already showed they were angry. Occasionally you half expect a lower-third graphic reading: LIV MORGAN: CURRENTLY ANNOYED.
None of that was necessary here.
Morgan’s face did the work.
Wade Barrett described her as “ice cold”, noting how different she appeared from the animated, gloating champion we normally see.
It was excellent character work because it made sense. Morgan had not prepared for Lynch. She hadn’t volunteered for this. Somebody in management had essentially walked into her evening and changed the rules.
So she wrestled accordingly.
The opening exchanges were beautifully crisp. Lynch worked through a lock-up into arm control and a pinning combination before Morgan responded with one of her own. Becky escaped with a Matrix-like bridge, because apparently ordinary wrestling wasn’t sufficient, and Morgan soon cracked her with a rope-assisted boot vaguely reminiscent of a 619.
Then came an advert.
Of course.
Nothing preserves the rhythm of an increasingly good wrestling match quite like being reminded that consumer products exist.
The Boston Crab From Somewhere Else Entirely
When RAW returned, Morgan had Lynch trapped in one of the strangest holds I’ve seen for a while.
Liv was seated near the turnbuckle. Becky was hanging awkwardly through the ropes, her legs folded backwards into Morgan’s grip.
Technically, it was a half-Boston crab.
Practically, it looked as though somebody had fed a normal Boston crab into Mechagodzilla and asked it to redesign the move for unnecessary mechanical cruelty.
It couldn’t win the match because Lynch was in the ropes.
That wasn’t really the point.
Morgan was hurting her because Morgan was annoyed.
Even better, Lynch kept selling the damage afterwards. Wrestling moves matter far more when wrestlers act like they actually hurt.
Morgan remained in control and started the Three Amigos. The first suplex landed beautifully. Then another.
At this point the ice began to thaw slightly.
Before the first, Morgan stared at Lynch with an expression that said something like, “don’t fuck with me”. By the second, confidence was returning. Then came the little Eddie Guerrero prance.
VIVA LA RAZA.
There she was.
The usual Liv had briefly returned.
Bad idea.
Lynch stopped the third amigo and delivered the suplex herself.
Sometimes character development takes several months. Sometimes it lasts approximately four seconds and ends with you being thrown backwards onto your neck.
Becky Lynch Is Still Becky Lynch
Lynch began mounting the comeback while continuing to favour the leg Morgan had attacked.
Strikes. Diving forearm. Bexploder near the corner. Top-rope leg drop.
One.
Two.
Not quite.
There is something reassuring about watching Becky Lynch wrestle a television match like this. She doesn’t need everything to feel spectacular. Her movements connect to each other. The match develops rather than simply moving between GIFs.
Morgan responded with a springboard lungblower, another unusual piece of offence in a match quietly collecting them.
Then another advert. Seriously.
We returned to Lynch delivering a superplex into a DDT combination for another near fall, and somewhere around here the match crossed from “good television main event” into something considerably better.
The official match eventually ran 18 minutes and 10 seconds. It didn’t feel like eighteen minutes, although perhaps that’s because several of them were spent being sold things.
Lynch dismantled the announce table, and inevitably somebody ended up on it.
There was some positional negotiation first, because apparently even attempted human destruction requires administration. Morgan tried putting Lynch on the desk. Becky reversed it.
Manhandle Slam. Morgan landed spine-first.
The table didn’t break.
Sometimes the furniture refusing to cooperate makes a wrestling move look considerably nastier. Tables are expected to collapse theatrically. When they don’t, the human being involved simply lands on a desk.
Both women narrowly beat the count.
Morgan rolled outside again.
Then things became silly in a good way.
Liv Morgan Discovers the N64 Dash Attack
Morgan sent Lynch over the steel steps, then launched herself toward her with something that looked less like professional wrestling and more like a dash attack from Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64.
She caught Lynch with a sunset flip powerbomb from the steps, driving her onto the floor.
Excellent.
Another count approached ten.
Now the match had teeth.
Back inside, Morgan finally said it.
“It’s MY championship!”
Not screamed theatrically. Not delivered with the exaggerated cadence wrestling dialogue sometimes acquires.
Calmly.
That made it nastier.
The sentiment wasn’t really I’m the champion. It was closer to you have inconvenienced me for long enough.
They exchanged strikes and suddenly Morgan found Oblivion with wonderful momentum.
One.
Two.
No.
I would have happily accepted that as the finish.
Morgan apparently couldn’t.
She became hysterical, raining down strikes with little concern for precision before letting out a scream that could comfortably occupy a backing track on Disturbed’s “Down with the Sickness”, or announce Mechagodzilla emerging from Tokyo Bay.
This was Morgan at her best.
Not because she was doing more moves, but because the match had steadily stripped away the controlled irritation from her entrance. The champion who had arrived furious but composed was disappearing.
Lynch survived.
Manhandle Slam.
One.
Two.
Again, no.
Then the Dis-arm-her.
Morgan reached the ropes. Lynch applied it again. Joe Tessitore supplied the appropriate commentary:
“Tap or snap!”
And somewhere around here, unfortunately, everyone remembered we were watching WWE television.
Ah Yes, The Judgment Day
There was a problem.
Liv Morgan has other plans.
WWE has future matches to promote. Crown Jewel exists. Chelsea Green exists. The Women’s World Championship cannot simply wander off into another storyline because Becky Lynch happened to have an excellent match on Monday.
This is where wrestling becomes less sport and more municipal planning.
Morgan probably couldn’t lose the championship. Lynch probably shouldn’t lose cleanly.
Everyone must remain important.
Everyone must be protected.
Nobody can simply win.
Enter The Judgment Day.
Raquel Rodriguez and Roxanne Perez appeared at ringside and eventually attacked Lynch, causing the disqualification at 18:10 and allowing Morgan to retain through champion’s advantage.
Meh.
I understand it.
I’ve watched wrestling for long enough to understand it.
That doesn’t mean I have to enjoy another Judgment Day interference finish.
The faction has reached that peculiar stage of wrestling existence where its members remain individually entertaining, but its primary group activity seems to involve running towards wrestling rings whenever somebody else is having too nice an evening.
Intervene. Distract. Attack. Cause chaos.
Repeat.
DX didn’t just do this.
And there I am again, a wrestling fan in his mid-thirties shouting at an Attitude Era-shaped cloud.
Everyone Is Here
At least the aftermath was fun.
Chelsea Green arrived. Iyo Sky joined the chaos. Bodies started appearing everywhere and the whole women’s division briefly resembled somebody selecting characters on a fighting game screen by hammering every button simultaneously.
Then Tiffany Stratton appeared carrying the Money in the Bank briefcase.
Now we’re talking.
She delivered the Prettiest Moonsault Ever onto the wreckage and appeared ready to cash in.
For a moment, this increasingly elaborate television main event might actually produce a championship change.
Then Dominik Mysterio grabbed Morgan by the legs, hauled her away and escaped through the crowd before the cash-in could become official.
The championship survived.
Of course it did.
Is Becky Lynch the Best Female Wrestler Ever?
There isn’t an objective answer, because professional wrestling is inconveniently resistant to spreadsheets.
But Becky Lynch has one of the strongest cases for being the greatest female WWE wrestler ever.
The résumé is absurd. Lynch won the 2019 Royal Rumble and then defeated Ronda Rousey and Charlotte Flair in the first women’s match to main-event WrestleMania, becoming Raw and SmackDown Women’s Champion simultaneously. She has since completed WWE’s Women’s Grand Slam and accumulated championships across essentially every level available to her.
Whether that makes her the greatest depends on what you value. Charlotte Flair has her own argument. Trish Stratus changed expectations in a much less hospitable era. Bianca Belair belongs in the conversation. Outside WWE, the question gets even bigger.
But Lynch’s combination of wrestling ability, character work, longevity, mainstream popularity and historical significance puts her comfortably in the conversation.
Matches like this help.
She didn’t need to win. She didn’t need months of preparation. WWE changed the card, and Lynch went out and produced.
That counts for something.
Is Becky Lynch Nice in Real Life?
By publicly available accounts, Becky Lynch appears to be well-liked and considerably warmer away from her television character.
A Washington Post profile described her as a “good-natured and comforting presence” around fans, while Bianca Belair spoke positively about Lynch as a colleague, mother and performer.
Obviously, nobody watching from outside her personal life can meaningfully certify whether somebody is “nice”. We know public interactions and colleagues’ accounts, not the whole person.
The available evidence, though, suggests Rebecca Quin and Becky Lynch are rather different propositions.
Probably for the best.
Liv Morgan Didn’t Need the Win
The strange thing about the ending is that it didn’t particularly damage what came before it.
Morgan was excellent.
The wrestling was excellent, but the smaller details stayed with me: the reduced make-up, the stare before the Three Amigos, the tiny Guerrero prance when confidence briefly returned, the venom behind “It’s MY championship”, then the increasingly wild desperation when Lynch simply wouldn’t disappear.
That’s wrestling character work without a fluorescent arrow pointing towards it.
The DQ was frustrating because the match had earned a proper ending. It was also completely predictable once you considered everything WWE needed to protect afterwards.
That tends to happen when wrestling becomes aware of its own future.
For eighteen minutes, though, Becky Lynch and Liv Morgan made an improvised Monday night title match feel important. Then the factions arrived, the briefcase appeared, Dominik performed emergency champion extraction, and the great television machine continued rolling towards the next premium live event.
Needs must.
Morgan kept the championship.
Lynch kept her credibility.
WWE kept its future plans.
And we got a bloody good match before everybody remembered there was booking to protect.
