Five women stood in a ring on SmackDown and screamed one word at the other side: WarGames. That is the best booking WWE has done all fall, and it was not close.
Wrestling Inc’s recap of the Nov 13 show and the results rundown have the order of operations. Charlotte Flair beat US Champion Jacy Jayne by pinfall with Natural Selection in a non-title match, and the match turned into a brawl on the way there.
Lainey Reid and Fallon Henley came out to go after Flair. Bliss and Paxley confronted them at ringside. Michin and B-Fab went after Bliss and Paxley. Bayley went after Michin and B-Fab with a kendo stick, and Jade Cargill took Bayley out. Then Stephanie Vaquer returned to help Bayley, and that opened the door for Flair to hit Natural Selection for the win. Nobody needed a title on the line, because the finish was the point.
That sequence is the whole sell. Every woman in it had a job, a grudge and a reason to be in the ring, and nobody stood around waiting for a graphic to tell us who mattered.
Flair, Bliss, Paxley, Bayley and Vaquer then challenged Cargill, Michin, B-Fab and Fatal Influence to Women’s WarGames at Survivor Series on Nov 28. Vaquer told Cathy Kelley backstage that she knew she was fully in when Flair called her for backup. That is a small line doing a lot of work. It tells you the group is a crew and not a roster assignment.
The math is the story
Here is the second layer. WarGames needs even numbers, and the numbers do not work yet. Wrestling Inc points out that Cargill’s side has six candidates: Cargill, Michin, B-Fab, Jayne, Reid and Henley. Flair’s side has five. Either Flair finds a sixth, or Cargill’s side has to cut someone.
I love that. A women’s match with stakes that come from who gets to stand in the cage, with no belt attached, is a rarer thing than it should be. Whoever gets cut from Cargill’s six has a real reason to be furious. Whoever Flair picks as number six steps into a spotlight she did not have a week ago.
The counterargument is easy to make. Five-on-six talk is a booking puzzle WWE could solve with one lazy surprise entrant, and a returning name does not mean a returning-name payoff. Fine. Maybe the sixth spot is a letdown. It still would not undo what the build already did, which is make people care about a match before anyone has been told the rules.
If you want more on the other cards taking shape, here is the Survivor Series WarGames card as it stood after Raw. And for where Vaquer’s character stood before Friday, there is Vaquer’s title run.
Here is WWE’s own clip from earlier in the week of Fatal Influence and Cargill’s side lining up together:
https://x.com/WWE/status/2119984766032179458
The sixth spot on Flair’s side is the one to watch. Whoever walks through that gate on Nov 28 will have two weeks of that scream behind her.
