Three stories drop tonight, and when you read them together, they paint a picture that should make every booker in that Stamford building uncomfortable.
Let’s start with the good news, because there is some. Hiromu Takahashi showing up on SmackDown is genuinely exciting if you’ve watched New Japan for the last decade. The man is a lunatic in the best possible sense — charismatic, physical, completely unique. Whatever name they’ve slapped on him, the talent underneath it is real. File that one under “we’ll see,” but the ceiling is high.
Now let’s talk about the rest of it.
Blake Monroe’s debut against Giulia gets pulled. Again. I don’t know if this is injury, creative cold feet, or somebody upstairs deciding the moment wasn’t right — but I know what it looks like from the outside, and it looks like a company that built a slow burn angle and then flinched when the match was due. You want to know how you kill momentum on a new act? Do exactly this, repeatedly. The audience is not a patient organism. They will find someone else to care about. Giulia is red-hot right now, and a women’s title program lives or dies on the matches actually happening. Delays are not drama. Delays are static.
Then there’s Tatum Paxley versus Michin next week, and look — I like Tatum. The character work she put in down in NXT was legitimately interesting, unsettling in the right ways. But this feels like a consolation prize debut. She gets her SmackDown match because she was standing next to Charlotte Flair when somebody needed a number to fill a backstage segment. That is not a launch. That is paperwork.
Here’s what bothers me most when I put these three items side by side: WWE’s women’s division is stacked right now. Genuinely, embarrassingly deep. Giulia, Michin, Paxley, Monroe — that’s four people who could have programs worth caring about, and somehow the booking is managing to make all of it feel smaller than it should be. One debut delayed, one debut positioned as a throwaway, and one women’s title feud sitting in neutral while someone figures out the schedule.
This isn’t a talent problem. Say it with me. This is never a talent problem.
Someone in that building needs to look at what they have in that locker room and start treating these matches like the main events some of them actually deserve to be. Hiromu arriving is a distraction. What’s happening with the women is the real story, and it’s not a flattering one right now.