![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/rhea_iyo_evo2025.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I closed my laptop after the show because I was watching on my laptop because Peacock on XBOX sucks and doesn\u2019t let me rewind because I can\u2019t watch live events live because I have kids and it conflicts with their bedtime routine so I always have to start all the PPVs<\/span> PLEs late, and I said to mythical wife, who humors me and knows a little bit about professional wrestling in her own right; I think that might have been the greatest women\u2019s match in WWE history.<\/span><\/p>\n Obviously, I\u2019m talking about the World Championship match between Iyo Sky vs. Rhea Ripley that closed out Evolution 2<\/em>, where [spoiler alert that doesn\u2019t matter because I have zero readers] Naomi ended up winning the match and the World Championship when she cashed in Money in the Bank and committed the heist of the century of the women\u2019s division.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not even mad about the ending, with Naomi sneaking in at the end and doing what she did, because it was logical, it made sense, and in the context of WWE canon, why the fuck shouldn\u2019t she have done what she did, preying on two superstars who had just put on a legitimate match of the year contender and were spent and exhausted and easy pickings?<\/span><\/p>\n Everything about the whole main event to Evolution 2 was outstanding; frankly, the whole show deserves its flowers, considering the tremendous amount of adversity it faced, but the main event was honestly, in my opinion, not just the best WWE match I\u2019ve seen all year, but as far as from their women\u2019s division goes, I am hard pressed to say that it\u2019s genuinely the greatest WWE women\u2019s match in company history.<\/span><\/p>\n Which is really funny considering I believed that the company put the match on the card as a panic move when Liv Morgan dislocated her shoulder, because it seemed like the card was going to be built around her vs. Nikki Bella in a battle of eras.\u00a0 There was no inkling of seeds that Iyo Sky was going to go against Rhea Ripley, and the match literally came to fruition barely two weeks prior, to which I think was a complete in case of emergency break glass moment by the WWE when they realized that they had literally no marquee matchup for Evolution 2 anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n Honestly, the whole show was a masterclass of taking chicken shit and making it into chicken salad in my opinion.\u00a0 I said back in 2018 that the original Evolution absolutely had to be the best PPV of the year, considering the historical impact of being women-only, in a massively male dominated industry.\u00a0 For the most part I think they succeeded, seeing as how Becky Lynch and Charlotte saw to it, with their incredible last-woman standing match, but they also had a lot of build-up, a stacked card, and very apparent careful planning that went behind it.<\/span><\/p>\n Evolution 2 was announced quite a while ago, but there was almost no buildup for it.\u00a0 For all the flack that TKO gets as being money grubbing, it felt as if the event was announced as a cash grab, banking on fans to just throw their money at it no matter what, solely because it was WWE.\u00a0 Packaged into a whole weekend of wrestling in Atlanta, it was the third show following NXT\u2019s Great American Bash, and Saturday Night\u2019s Main Event, and they arrogantly pulled the bullshit of only selling tickets in egregiously priced two-event packages at first, before realizing sales weren\u2019t what they were hoping for, and then bringing things (slowly) back to earth.<\/span><\/p>\n However again, despite the cards being built for NXT and SNME, Evolution 2 hardly had any proper build-up, and matches started forming in manner that was reminiscent of a slacking student realizing they have an assignment due, but they waited until the last minute to start it.\u00a0 The one thing they really tried to get started with, with Liv Morgan assaulting Nikki Bella immediately went off the rails when Liv got legitimately hurt, and then they put the whole event on the shelf to further kowtow to their Saudi overlords, and then started to start flinging shit on the wall after the gross Saudi version of Money in the Bank<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Fewer things say, \u201cwe didn\u2019t plan for anything, but we want to include as much talent as we can\u201d than a battle royale, which helped fill out a talent sheet for the event, but then the rest of the matches just started filling in, in really clunky manner.\u00a0 Naomi vs. Jade Cargill, Becky\/Bayley and Lyra for the women\u2019s Intercontinental, a four-team clusterfuck for the women\u2019s tag blets, an NXT Women\u2019s championship match, and Tiffany Stratton vs. Trish Stratus?\u00a0 Like really, how much lead time was Trish Stratus given before she knew she\u2019d be thrust into duty?<\/span><\/p>\n So yeah, obviously Iyo vs. Rhea was put on the card to be the one obvious hard carry, that was going to rescue the show if it was bad, or put the exclamation point on a show if it had been good leading up to it.<\/span><\/p>\n And in spite of the clunky booking, in spite of the concern of wrestling fan burnout from a full weekend of shows before Evolution 2.\u00a0 In spite of the Beyonce concert next door at the Mercedes Benz Arena, and in spite of MLB All-Star Weekend taking place 9 miles north on I-75, Evolution 2, fucking delivered.<\/span><\/p>\n This is why I have keen interest in women\u2019s wrestling; not just because so many women are easy on the eyes, and not just because as a father to daughters, it\u2019s important to me to see women get their chance to succeed and thrive.\u00a0 It\u2019s that the women always, always have to perform in manner that is fighting an uphill battle, fighting to prove something, because unfortunately, this is just something that they always have to do, in a male dominated industry in a male dominated world.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been watching wrestling long enough to have witnessed all sorts of talents come and go, and believe me, it\u2019s really easy to pick out the guys who really genuinely care about the business versus the ones who are tourists and are hoping to parlay success in wrestling into other careers.\u00a0 And these days, with as much infrastructure there is in the industry, a lot of the tourists get weeded out before the mainstream can get to see them, and by the time we get to events like Evolution, it\u2019s definitely more all hands on deck of people who not only want to be there, but want to give their best and prove that they belong.<\/span><\/p>\n But for the sake of not turning this entire post into a love letter to each and every match, I want to get back to the Iyo vs. Rhea match, because as I stated before, this match was not only the best match on the card, it was honestly one of the best matches I\u2019ve seen all year, and as far as I\u2019m concerned, I\u2019m going to say that it was the greatest women\u2019s match in WWE history.<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, better than Bayley vs. Sasha\u2019s Iron Woman match, better than the Four Horsewomen-four corners match.\u00a0 Better than Charlotte\/Becky\/Sasha for the inaugural WWE women\u2019s championship.\u00a0 Better than Trish Stratus and Lita\u2019s first-ever women\u2019s main event match, and leaps, bounds and galaxies better than just about everything in the Divas\u2019 era.<\/span><\/p>\n It had everything from a compelling base story, with the whole Rhea has never beaten Iyo narrative.\u00a0 Both put on their carry shoes and delivered a match that had everything from a respectful start, technical prowess, near falls, digging deep into their arsenals.\u00a0 An extremely rare female referee bump from Jessika Carr, which most internet geeks know is a wrestler herself, so she sold it like a million bucks, which led to a brutal brawl outside the ring which saw some crazy bumps and spots.<\/span><\/p>\n And when the action came back into the ring, there were a few more crazy spots and near falls, and a great Spanish fly spot so late in the game, massive respect to both workers for executing it.\u00a0 Of course, there was always the possibility that Naomi could show up, but I was actually predicting it would happen shortly after the match, but when she did, it was still a surprise, because the match was still in progress.<\/span><\/p>\n When Naomi completed the heist, I wasn\u2019t even mad, because I\u2019ve always been a supporter of Naomi specifically because I respect her as a worker, and I\u2019m happy for her to reach the top of the mountain, especially after the years of shit she had to trudge through with her Sasha-led abandonment of the company a few years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n Everything about the match was outstanding.\u00a0 The work from Iyo and Rhea, the performances of their selling and storytelling.\u00a0 The drama of a ref bump, and the brawl that occurred with no supervision.\u00a0 Iyo hitting her moonsault and Rhea kicking out.\u00a0 Rhea desperately trying to land a Riptide with the ref in play.\u00a0 Naomi cashing in, and completely saving the heat that all but ensures the Iyo and Rhea rivalry will have yet another chapter in the future with the original narrative completely intact.<\/span><\/p>\n I loved everything about it.\u00a0 I was entertained, I was thrilled, and even a jaded smark like me felt like a true fan again, throwing my hands up at near falls and covering my mouth and going OHHH at some of the impressive spots.<\/span><\/p>\n This was truly the greatest women\u2019s match in WWE history, and I will die on this hill.\u00a0 It is a front-runner for WWE match of the year as far as I\u2019m concerned, and in the future when we talk about stalwart matches of history, Iyo and Rhea deserve a chance to plead their case.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I closed my laptop after the show because I was watching on my laptop because Peacock on XBOX sucks and doesn\u2019t let me rewind because I can\u2019t watch live events live because I have kids and it conflicts with their bedtime routine so I always have to start all the PPVs PLEs late, and I … Continue reading WWE Evolution 2: I think that was the greatest women\u2019s match in company history<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,69,54,55],"class_list":["post-50771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-observations","tag-television","tag-wrestling","tag-wwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50773,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50771\/revisions\/50773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}