A bit of déjà vu with the female NXT trios
and it worked soooo well the first time with the 'Diva's Revolution'
It is all very strange.
That is not to say that both RAW and Smackdown did not need an injection of new blood. There is only so often we can see the same four/five women having four-ways to find a new #1 Contender, many of which seem to be designed to protect as many individuals as possible, but actually allowing no one to shine.
The concurrent debuts of two trios on the same week again demonstrate the lack of imagination in much of WWE Creative. All three brands are already awash with trios - Shield, Miztourage, New Day, Undisputed Era, Sanity and perhaps even some form of British Strong Style to come. If that bankruptcy of ideas was not bad enough, the two new female trios seem awfully similar; a cookie-cutter of (to paraphrase NorCal) "pale goth leader, pretty blonde and tough fighter." It's almost as if someone in WWE Creative watched some TFS: Dragonball Z recently and noticed the misfit minions of many a main villain - "pretty one, weird one, and big tough stupid one."
Falkon pointed out that Sonya Deville and Mandy Rose do have a connection to Paige in that they were both contestants on Tough Enough when Paige was a judge. But are we really to believe that the only connections between these two trios is Tough Enough and NXT? Tough Enough is hardly fresh in everyone's mind and suggesting that NXT is their connection is as weak as the annual RAW/Smackdown 'we hate each other' in time for Bragging Rights or Survivor Series.
And even if you accept the Tough Enough connection with Sonya and Mandy and they are there to make Paige dominant, it still does not take away from how strange the trio are. The development of a manipulative and expansionist almost cult-like gimmick could be interesting though and could be used to explain the misfit minions of Paige.
Such a definition of Absolution is sorely needed as there is an even stranger "pale, pretty and tough" combination in the Riot Squad; Liv Morgan in particular sticks out as an odd choice for a heel in general, never mind a rough and tough heel team. There were certainly others down in the Performance Centre who would have been a better fit such as Jazzy 'Alpha Female' Gabert or even Nikki Cross seeing as how individuals are being promoted to the main shows before their time was up in NXT.
There are even more logical groupings from with in the two trios as well: Liv and Rose as a Blonde Bombshell team, perhaps as back up to Alexa or Carmella (or for whenever WWE finally dump enough money on Toni Storm's doorstep). Sonya and Logan in Ruby Riot's Fight Club would have made sense too. Sure, those are a little stereotypical, but teams usually are.
In terms of the benefits to their respective divisions, while they provide something worth focusing on, the introduction of two trios also does not solve one of the main issues with both women's divisions - the lack of depth. Sure, there are now more bodies but in the end it seems like both groups are being plugged straight into programmes in which the entirety of both rosters are involved. For the moment, the trios have not increased storyline depth as they are the focus their respective rosters.
These needs to be something else going on for both RAW and Smackdown's ladies. While Absolution deal with Sasha/Bayley, Alexa should be defending against someone else even if it is a series of one-offs against weak opposition like Dana or Alicia, while Asuka slays the Jaxx giant; similarly on Smackdown, there should be something else going on other than defending against the attacks of Riot Squad, but that would entail someone turning face.
With Becky off shooting a movie and Naomi seemingly shelved, there is only Charlotte as a face, with the Riot Squad only exacerbating the imbalance between heels and faces on Smackdown. We have already seen the need for Charlotte and Naomi to team with the only recently de-throned heel champion Natalya. All the while we have Carmella conveniently absent so we can forget about her in time to cash in and steal the title from Charlotte after a potentially strong feud between the champion and the Riot Squad. The imbalance is not quite so bad on RAW with Asuka, Bayley, Sasha and Mickie, but it is still not great.
Worse still is that being in a trio for the sake of being in a trio gives the five new talents very limited room to develop and/or display any kind of character or even in the ring for as trios they may be somewhat limited to gang muggings.
WWE also seem to have been blinded by the success that Alexa Bliss has been despite having been called up too soon and essentially having to learn on the job. How many of the five call-ups are actually ready? I would find it difficult to any of them except Ruby Riot, and I thought that she still had a good few months' worth of matches and feuds in NXT with Sane and Moon.
So these NXT call-ups could be for a double-whammy of difficulty - too soon and not enough room to shine or develop.
Just how many of the Nexus are still employed in the company again?
For all that criticism, I have enjoyed the limited exposure the two teams have had so far. The surrounding of Asuka by Absolution, while stolen directly from Shield/Nexus, was at least interesting, while the Riot Squad have not been encumbered with any kind of clumsy nuance so far; they just beat people up. Unfortunately, everything the Riots do is tempered by the fact that we have just seen something very similar the night before on RAW.
Basically, there is enough promise here to provide some interesting women's division storylines and matches and both trios are only in their early days, but there are also significant sinkholes for the whole thing to fall into dug by the errors already made in splitting the division and the odd choices, and I do not have the confidence that WWE Creative (particularly on RAW) has the ability to navigate around those sinkholes.
On a more positive note, having watched some Jumping Bomb Angels recently, it would be nice to see Absolution, Riot Squad or even the Iconic Duo competing in a good women's tag team feud.