Somehow, Lana has been able to acquire two SmackDown Live Women’s Championship opportunities without winning a single match of her in-ring career on television. While JBL painted a picture during and after her title match against Naomi that made Lana look like Lita, there were obviously many areas of improvement that spectators saw during the match.
One person who is not a proponent of Lana’s overall direction is Steve Austin, and he had this to say during his most recent episode of The Steve Austin Show.
“Naomi deserves better, the title deserves better. Lana wasn’t up for this task at hand, at this point in her career. I thought she had much more mystique as the valet, whatever the term is, with Rusev. Man, they kind of killed her gimmick off, and reinvented her, and I just liked her the way she was. So, if she wants to be in the ring, that’s more power to her, but a lot of the stuff I got on Twitter was, ‘Hey man. For a first match, she did a lot better than I expected.’ Ok. As I say that, good for her. But as a company who’s striving for excellence in sports entertainment/professional wrestling, the best of the best belong on a pay-per-view.
“They’re not pay-per-views anymore, but the best of the best – whether they’re a top-tier worker, or someone over with X-factor, it factor, or selling merch, or drawing a crowd – those are the people that need to be featured on the pay-per-views. And all of a sudden, you have this person come from nowhere, get a title shot, be featured, now come back two weeks later to be on another featured match on SmackDown, which is gonna do a number or not. But I just thought, you have to treat a title with higher regard and respect than that, and put the people on the pay-per-views, or the events that are broadcast on the WWE Network, the best of the best are on the shows. That’s just the way I see it.”
If this transcription is used, please credit The Steve Austin Show via WrestleZone.
