The Unironic Enjoyment of a Divas Match

Alicia Fox/Aksana vs. The Bella Twins WWE Main Event 1/22/14

Wednesday was a pretty normal day for me. I listened to Jay Reatard while driving to work, and also while at work. I had a meeting with my boss. I made toast. I had an apple. I spent time dicking around on fangraphs. I dealt with  Fixed Assets tracking. I spent my lunch break reading a magazine in my car while listening to John Fahey. I used words like "sub-object" and "ledger". I drove home from work while listening to Pharmakon. I played with my cat, Tacos, and kissed my girlfriend, Rachel, when I got home. This is a Wednesday for me. Or a Tuesday. Any weekday.

But then I eventually watched and enjoyed a WWE Divas match. I enjoyed it enough to text Phil to go out of his way to watch a Divas match (I assume Phil has not watched a Divas match since Aja Kong vs. Chaparrita Asari). I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a Divas match. It may have been a LayCool match. It was likely a Layla match of some sort. Or a Cherry match. It was probably Layla vs. Cherry.

We start with Aksana making fun of Brie's hair, and when she goes to touch it Brie slaps her hand away and elbows her face, then dishes out nice knees from the clinch. Brie also has a shockingly nice missile dropkick. But when Aksana takes over is when it gets real, as she throws a nice shot to Brie's stomach, and then drops three really great elbows. Fox tags in and Brie does a nice sly drop toe hold on the advancing Fox, which Alicia takes great by spilling dangerously face first into the ropes. Aksana cuts off Brie's attempt to tag out with another nice elbowdrop, and holy cow does Aksana throw great knees at Brie's face in the corner. Alicia Fox works one of the most compelling chinlocks I've seen in months (which is painfully obvious when most matches in WWE have to include a face-in-chinlock spot as the transition to final babyface comeback), and then locks in a nasty Can Opener. She seriously looked like she was choking her out! Fox really knows how to bump for Bella offense and really throws herself into bumps and spills, running especially hard into a missed turnbuckle charge. Nikki comes in with some flashy indy offense (I take your face and kind of snap it into my knee!) which is made to look not actually preposterous by Fox, who whips into that knee and snaps back. Nikki finishes it with a sick sit-out torture rack, with Fox ragdolling afterwards.

Okay. A couple things:

~This match was like 3 minutes long. It shouldn't be impressive that 4 wrestlers went 3 minutes without screwing anything up. It was likely more impressive because Main Event sucks now. It used to guarantee a long Cesaro match but now it's always got a super long Kofi or R-Truth match instead. Divas matches are going to look better after Kofi or R-Truth matches.

~There were some weird things that I would call out in a second in other matches. Aksana, for as good as she looked on offense, took one of the worst bumps off the apron I've seen. She fell off the apron like somebody dipping their toe into a cold swimming pool, and then getting pushed in unexpectedly. She also, midway through the match, got obsessed with adjusting her onesie over her butt. You know, the way Samoa Joe used to constantly pull his trunks up over his tummy. Well Aksana was constantly tugging on her trunks like that. Major pet peeve from me, for whatever reason. I can handle rope running, but don't adjust your gear too much! Derp derp.

Whatever. Fun Divas match on a Wednesday.

PAS: I did not watch this match.