8 Things WWE Must Do To Make Paige A Star

2. Let Her Wrestle

WWE.com

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The WWE Divas division has been stuck in a horrid spin-cycle of abstinence and apathy for several years now. The matches suck because the crowd doesn’t care but the crowd doesn’t care because the matches suck. They’re 2-3 minutes long and full of girls whom WWE has done absolutely nothing to make the audience invest emotionally in their character.

On the odd occasion WWE does give two of the girls a good amount of time to strut their stuff, you’ll find a similar pattern emerges. For the first 80% of the match, the dead reaction remains the same. The final 20% will see the crowd come to life a bit, as they build to the finish. The problem is that none of the crowd are expecting that. They’re expecting another 2-3 minute popcorn break of a bout because that’s all they’ve been given for the last 6 months!

Television is all about consistency. People take comfort in knowing what they’re tuning into every week. They like the routine. If you watch RAW, Daniel Bryan will show up and chant “YES!” a lot (when not on his honeymoon); John Cena will crack some jokes; The Shield will have an excellent, exciting match. TV is all about consistency and if you are not consistent with the promotion of a character, there’s a good chance people will not care.

Professional wrestling has one true advantage over all other forms of televised drama and that is the live crowd. The characters can play off it, the crowd can play off the characters. Sometimes, such as every night after Wrestlemania, the crowd can become a character in of itself. The physical proximity of the live crowd to the in-ring action and the emotion they can transmit through the screen is pivotal to WWE’s success.

The best way WWE can invest the crowd into Paige is to let her invest in them, with her performance in the ring. You need only look at someone like Bray Wyatt to see such a relationship in full effect: last night on Raw, the crowd cheered Wyatt until John Cena reminded them he was the heel and that is because he is excellent at building that relationship with the live crowd.

Paige will need to be able to do the same through her in-ring performances. She’ll need time and she’ll need it consistently, every week, to remind people that this isn’t an automatic cue to hit the rest rooms. If she doesn’t get the chance to build that rapport, when she does finally speak she’ll be met with “WHAT?” chants.