For three minutes, WWE had something genuinely interesting.
Fatal Influence’s Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid challenged B-Fab and Michin for the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship on the November 6 episode of SmackDown, giving us the relatively unusual sight of two heel teams being asked to wrestle each other without an obvious hero in the equation.
It worked.
Then Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley jumped the barricade, attacked everybody, the match was thrown out, Bayley arrived, Charlotte Flair returned, and suddenly the wrestling became secondary to WWE putting the pieces in place for Survivor Series: WarGames.
As an angle? There was plenty to like.
As somebody who was enjoying the match? Come on, WWE. Behave.
Are the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships basically SmackDown titles now?
Before getting anywhere near the match, there is a wider problem worth addressing.
The WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship increasingly feels like a SmackDown championship rather than a genuinely company-wide prize.
That is particularly strange because the entire appeal of a women’s tag championship should be its ability to move. Raw. SmackDown. NXT. Major events. Different combinations of wrestlers suddenly having a reason to interact.
Fatal Influence held the titles for 83 days after Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid defeated Paige and Brie Bella at Saturday Night’s Main Event XLV on July 18. Yet their reign became heavily associated with Friday nights rather than feeling like something stretching across WWE’s considerable landscape.
They appeared on AAA programming during that period, but not in a championship defence.
Hopefully WWE changes that. The division becomes much more interesting when the belts function as passports rather than property belonging to one show.
For now, however, SmackDown appears to be their home.
Who are the current members of Fatal Influence in WWE?
The current members of Fatal Influence are Jacy Jayne, Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid. Jayne leads the group, with Henley and Reid forming its established tag team.
And they are becoming one of my favourite acts in WWE.
Before the match, Byron Saxton interviewed Fatal Influence backstage.
Or Brian, apparently.
“Listen, Brian,” Jayne began.
“It’s Byron.”
“Sure. Yeah, whatever.”
Perfect.
It is such a small exchange, but it explains Jacy Jayne remarkably well. Saxton correcting her does not embarrass Jayne because, in her mind, his name is irrelevant. He is simply the bloke holding the microphone while somebody more important speaks.
Then she turns towards the tag division.
“Listen, we only speak facts, and the truth hurts. Tatum and Alexa were WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions for what, a whole two minutes? Pathetic, if you ask me.”
Fatal Influence followed by acknowledging B-Fab and Michin before delivering the important part.
“It’s time for that gold to be back where it belongs.”
They remain excellent at this stuff. The arrogance works because they completely believe it.
How did Fatal Influence form in NXT?
Fatal Influence formed in WWE NXT around Jacy Jayne, Fallon Henley, and Jazmyn Nyx, developing into a faction built on strength in numbers and an increasingly ruthless attitude toward anyone they considered expendable.
Jayne already had considerable faction experience through Toxic Attraction, while Henley’s transformation took her far from her earlier Chase U-adjacent babyface presentation.
Eventually, that ruthlessness consumed one of their own.
If someone becomes the weak link, the group doesn’t protect them. It replaces them.
When did Lainey Reid join Jacy Jayne and Fallon Henley?
Lainey Reid joined Jacy Jayne and Fallon Henley in 2025 after attacking Jazmyn Nyx and taking her place in Fatal Influence. The former NCAA Division I track-and-field athlete subsequently enjoyed an extraordinarily quick rise, winning WWE Women’s Tag Team gold alongside Henley.
She has fitted remarkably well.
That became obvious almost immediately against Michin.
Lainey Reid and Michin find something worth watching
This was heel against heel, and Wade Barrett quickly pointed out the problem facing the referee.
Both teams bend rules. Both exploit distractions. Both are comfortable operating with additional bodies at ringside.
In other words, good luck.
Michin and Reid started with a lovely little mirrored sequence.
Both attempted kicks. Both caught the other’s leg. Both calmly put the legs back down.
They tried again with punches, realised they were essentially reflecting each other, and stopped.
Michin then offered her hand.
For a brief second, it seemed like two evenly matched wrestlers recognised each other.
Absolutely not.
Michin suckered Reid into position and attacked her.
That is professional wrestling. Beautiful nonsense.
The sequence continued with pinning combinations before Reid responded with her own offence, and there was enough chemistry between them to make me want to see considerably more.
Unfortunately, considerably more was exactly what we weren’t getting.
B-Fab looks transformed
B-Fab entered next, and the physical difference from her Hit Row days is difficult to miss.
She looks enormous.
Not necessarily in overall size, but through her shoulders and upper body. She’s clearly put in serious work in the gym, and it’s changed how convincing her offence looks.
The old Hit Row presentation, bucket hat and largely supporting role feels increasingly distant.
She now looks like somebody who belongs in a physical wrestling match.
Reid eventually tagged Fallon Henley, who entered with immediate urgency after Reid struck B-Fab on her way out. Henley followed with a fast attack of her own, and suddenly the match had found another gear.
Henley also has one of the coolest entrances in the contemporary women’s division.
The hat. The coat. The camera interaction. Jacy dancing behind her.
So naturally, WWE cut most of it for an advertisement.
Fatal Influence effectively received a couple of seconds in the ring.
B-Fab and Michin somehow got even less. They were already standing there when television returned, receiving little more than a side-angle shot and name graphic.
This was a WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship match.
The champions got no entrance.
If WWE wants viewers to believe its women’s championships matter, presentation is part of that equation. You cannot tell the audience something is important while simultaneously treating the people holding the belts as furniture waiting for the challengers to arrive.
Fallon Henley and B-Fab start throwing hands
Once Henley and B-Fab settled into their exchange, the match became increasingly physical.
Henley wrapped herself around B-Fab with a monkey-on-the-back style headlock while Jayne shouted instructions from ringside.
“Take her out!”
Subtle.
B-Fab eventually broke the hold and began firing back. Reid was knocked from the apron. Henley responded by removing Michin from the opposite side.
Then B-Fab delivered a sharp slap.
Henley answered.
Both women went down.
Their partners were down.
For a moment, only two people remained standing.
Jacy Jayne and Jade Cargill.
And that should have been the point where the match moved into its next phase.
Instead, two women appeared on the barricade.
Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley ruin a good match
Alexa Bliss and Tatum Paxley launched themselves from the barricade, targeting Jayne and Cargill before entering the ring and attacking the wrestlers involved in the match.
No contest.
Three minutes.
That annoyed me.
There are circumstances where heroic characters interfering in a match makes complete sense. If somebody has tormented them for weeks, cheated them out of a championship or committed some enormous injustice, revenge can override sporting etiquette.
Here, the justification felt considerably thinner.
Bliss and Paxley wanted another opportunity at the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship after losing the belts. Fine.
But interrupting an active championship match and robbing everyone else of a proper conclusion doesn’t make them particularly sympathetic.
More importantly, it cost us what was becoming a good wrestling match.
The official stoppage came around three minutes in, leaving B-Fab and Michin as champions and ensuring Fatal Influence never got a decisive result.
That is the frustrating part.
WWE did not need 20 minutes here. Give them eight or ten. Let Henley and Reid work. Let B-Fab and Michin establish themselves as champions.
Then create your chaos.
Instead, the match became scaffolding for the angle.
Charlotte Flair returns, and everything changes
Once the bell became irrelevant, SmackDown descended into a women’s division traffic jam.
Fatal Influence and the champions briefly found themselves sharing enemies. Bayley arrived looking for Jade Cargill.
Then Charlotte Flair’s music hit.
Now this was interesting.
Flair had been absent since October, and her return immediately changed the segment’s scale. She entered the fight, cleared bodies and eventually found herself standing opposite Cargill.
Charlotte Flair versus Jade Cargill.
Yes, please.
Something wonderfully straightforward about that rivalry.
Two women presented as exceptional physical specimens. Two enormous personalities. Two wrestlers accustomed to walking into a room and being treated as the most important person inside it.
You barely need to decorate it.
Just let them dislike each other.
What titles has Fatal Influence won in WWE?
Fatal Influence’s rise has increasingly been accompanied by championship gold.
| Fatal Influence member | Championship | Key detail |
| Jacy Jayne | WWE Women’s United States Championship | Established Jayne as the singles leader of the SmackDown faction |
| Fallon Henley | WWE Speed Championship | Added another singles accolade to the group’s collection |
| Fallon Henley & Lainey Reid | WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship | 83-day reign during 2026 |
That distribution matters.
Fatal Influence no longer feels like Jacy Jayne accompanied by two supporting characters. Jayne remains the personality at its centre, but Henley and Reid have their own credibility.
It makes the faction stronger.
How long was Fatal Influence’s Women’s Tag Team title reign?
Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid held the WWE Women’s Tag Team Championship for 83 days, from July 18 until October 9, 2026. They won the titles from Paige and Brie Bella at Saturday Night’s Main Event XLV and successfully defended them against Chelsea Green and Tiffany Stratton.
That history is precisely why the SmackDown match deserved more time.
They were not random challengers.
They were former champions trying to reclaim what they believed still belonged to them.
What brand is Fatal Influence on?
Fatal Influence are currently part of the WWE SmackDown roster. Jacy Jayne, Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid moved into SmackDown’s women’s division after establishing the faction through WWE NXT.
Since arriving, they have become deeply embedded in the blue brand’s wider women’s division, crossing paths with Alexa Bliss, Tatum Paxley, Charlotte Flair and now Jade Cargill’s orbit.
The danger is that WWE has almost too many interesting pieces.
Fatal Influence. Bliss and Paxley. B-Fab and Michin. Jade. Bayley. Charlotte.
That is a lot of talent fighting over the same patch of television.
Which brings us to the rather obvious clue WWE dropped after the match.
Is Fatal Influence heading towards Survivor Series: WarGames?
Charlotte Flair did not exactly whisper WWE’s intentions afterwards.
“If they want to take this to the limit… we’re going to war.”
War.
Survivor Series.
WarGames.
You don’t need Crash Bandicoot 2 levels of hidden plotting to work this one out.
The November 6 SmackDown title match appears to have been designed less as a self-contained championship contest and more as the ignition point for a larger women’s WarGames programme. The escalating waves of Bliss, Paxley, Bayley and finally Flair certainly gave WWE enough bodies to start building it.
And viewed purely through that lens, the segment worked.
The division suddenly feels interconnected.
Rivalries overlap. Alliances are uncomfortable. Fatal Influence have their own ambitions. Bliss and Paxley want the championships back. Bayley has unfinished business with Jade. Charlotte has returned and immediately placed herself opposite one of WWE’s most physically imposing women.
There is plenty here.
I just wish WWE had trusted the wrestling first.
Fatal Influence deserved the finish
That is ultimately where I land on this.
Fatal Influence were excellent before the bell. Jacy Jayne remains effortlessly obnoxious, Fallon Henley continues to be one of WWE’s most underrated performers, and Lainey Reid increasingly looks like she belongs at this level.
B-Fab and Michin looked good too.
The opening exchange between Reid and Michin had personality. B-Fab brought convincing physicality. Henley added pace. Even the unusual heel-versus-heel dynamic gave the match something different.
Then WWE pulled the plug.
The resulting brawl was entertaining. Charlotte Flair’s return mattered. Charlotte versus Jade Cargill has serious potential, and the prospect of these increasingly tangled relationships exploding inside WarGames is enticing.
But a wrestling show should occasionally let a promising match simply be a promising match.
Fatal Influence versus B-Fab and Michin had earned the chance to become one.
Three minutes was nowhere near enough.
