thelesterlee
Welcome to The Pipe Bomb, where we discuss the latest news and events from the world of wrestling, both inside and outside the ring. This week we have Maxxine Dupri’s dead brother and the debuts of Okada and Mercedes Mone
Maxxine Dupri vs. Candice LeRae
A couple weeks ago, I wrote my review of 2024 Elimination Chamber and admitted to skipping right past the WWE Women’s Tag Team Title match. I could not talk myself into losing the 10 minutes or so of my life witnessing a Candice LeRae match.
This Candice LeRae/Indi Hartwell tag team is as captivating as the condensation running down the side of my iced coffee right now. I’d rather count all the pores in my skin than watch these two women compete together.
WWE had an idea. A lightbulb went off.
Let’s go back to the end of last month when Maxxine Dupri was booed at a house show for not knowing how to wrestle:
A video from a WWE house show is going viral where Maxxine Dupri is booed, apparently due to her performance in the ring, which has been a topic of discussion in recent weeks.
They are not doing her any favors by exposing her like that. pic.twitter.com/nb8hnZvVy9
— ` (@The4Gautam) February 28, 2024
Naturally, this created some discourse surrounding how we treat women in the industry. Wrestlers rushed to her defense, including current Women’s World Champion, Rhea Ripley, who said “I really wish that some of you got booed and ridiculed in the public eye while being new at your job. Learning and getting better is all apart of being human. Be better as humans.”
Maxxine Dupri’s entire character is a hot girl learning how to wrestle in real-time, in front of a live audience and on national TV. I don’t believe fans are booing Dupri because they hate her personally or even just because she’s a bad performer.
In 2024, we all know how many talented wrestlers are sitting in the back with no creative or opportunity to get in front of the cameras while Maxxine Dupri is out here stinking it up and taking crucial time away from far superior performers. Of course people are going to boo.
Have you seen Tiffany Stratton out here?? This isn’t the early 2000’s diva era where all of the women were mediocre at best. Bianca Belair can lift an automobile over her head if the title is on the line. We don’t have time to watch Dupri awkwardly stumble through a match.
WWE decided to use Maxxine Dupri’s recent struggles as a chance to heat up Candice LeRae and turn Dupri into a huge babyface.
Here’s LaRae screaming at her in the middle of a match:
Candice LeRae mentions Maxxine Dupri’s dead brother.
MY GOD! #WWERAW pic.twitter.com/ZVJgJTN2Z8
— Fightful Wrestling (@Fightful) March 12, 2024
We need to talk about this ASAP. I’ve watched this clip infinity times.
Maxxine Dupri is in the middle of her reverse W-O-R-M move thing when Candice LeRae interrupts her, leading to the camera shot changing from a normal match to some sort of video game cut scene where suddenly, their voices are clear as day. Candice starts bullying Maxxine mid-match for the viewing audience while the live audience cannot discern what’s being said leading to a strange, complete no-sell from the crowd as they have no idea what’s going on.
Candice then tells her not only does the crowd hate her, but the women in the back make fun of her too and while Maxxine is trying her best to get some sort of emotional reaction out of her Bratz doll caked up face, Candice takes it a step further and says it’s a good thing Maxxine’s dead brother isn’t there to watch his sister be an embarrassment.
These are the moments you create when you’ve become too reactionary.
You can see this same thing affecting the Wrestlemania 40 main event.
It’s why none of this story makes sense.
The Rock is constantly pivoting and reacting to what fans on the internet are saying instead of sitting down and crafting a compelling storyline that makes sense for all of the characters involved and has a satisfying ending.
I mean, look at how this clip starts. Candice LeRae yells “SHE’S NOT TAKING THE MOVE”.
Taking the move? We are supposed to believe these women are fighting and one of the wrestlers says out loud “Hey, we’re not doing that part of the choreography”. An insane way to expose the business for the sole purpose of talking to internet fans who know the inner workings but why in the fuck are you writing ANYTHING for those nerds??
The Rock came back, took the main event from Cody and heard everyone complain so the next week he was a heel all of a sudden. Then Cody took the main event back because fans online were pissed. Now The Rock and Roman Reigns are cutting like, 60-minute promos on Smackdown every week because they need all the time available to explain the convoluted story they have no idea they’re telling as they keep changing week-by-week, segment-by-segment to get the universal praise of an internet wrestling community that exists exclusively to complain and JO to Skye Blue clips.
Yes, Vince McMahon is a racist, a pervert and a sex trafficker but he’s a carny, through and through who understands this supremely unique industry. He should be in prison until he dies. I want to make that clear.
The current TKO decision-makers aren’t quite understanding the storytelling process like how it makes no fucking sense to have Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns wrestle each other on both nights of Wrestlemania.
Wrestlemania 14 has my favorite main event of all time: Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Shawn Michaels with Mike Tyson as the special guest referee. Imagine how less important it would feel if there was a PPV the night before where Stone Cold and Mike Tyson teamed up against Shawn Michaels and Triple H like, 23 hours before their historic one-on-one match.
Oh but before I move on, I need to say I love the Candice/Maxxine thing. It is so incredibly silly and obvious that I have no choice but to consider it camp. It’s certainly the most memorable thing Candice LeRae has done to this point and in that regard, that melodramatic nonsense actually worked to make me care about this woman.
As far as Maxxine Dupri goes, we certainly didn’t need to hear about her dead brother but shout out to WWE for attempting to emotionally manipulate the fans to stop them from booing their current version of Stacy Keibler.
I think WWE believed Dupri would be a more improved wrestler by now or else they never would’ve started this project to begin with and since she’s not better and they can’t put her in a ring with Rhea Ripley yet, they have to try and turn her into this underdog or whatever but all this did was make me want to see Candice LeRae interrupt matches and shit on people.
Kazuchika Okada debuts in AEW
Admittedly, I don’t have a relationship with Okada. But from my vantage point, he’s always seemed like a star maker who exists as a bit of a final boss guys must defeat before we as fans can anoint people like Kenny Omega or Will Ospreay as the best in the world. Beating Okada is like winning a world championship.
It makes sense for him to align himself with the EVPs, Nick and Matt Jackson, so he can be presented as someone with the unfair advantage of the company decision-makers in his back pocket. It is a simple way of making him quickly unlikable.
My fear is his acquisition—along with Will Ospreay’s recent arrival—may put a ceiling on what the current AEW guys are capable of achieving. We spent 2023 watching Swerve Strickland transform himself into a bonafide superstar and we must pray Tony Khan doesn’t stray from the path but so far, Opsreay and Okada have taken a lottttt of screen time.
It feels like Okada will be a slow burn. Although he’s one of the highest-paid guys in the locker room, I believe he and the Young Bucks may be more likely to compete for a trios championship, perhaps leading to an Okada vs. Jay White storyline to feed the streets.
When you consider that Kenny Omega and MJF—the two biggest stars of the company—are out nursing injuries, you have to hope Okada doesn’t jump the line. Last week, I wrote about Ricky Starks not even being on the 2024 AEW Revolution card and now Okada and Ospreay are here taking even more TV time away from someone who has been here busting their ass every week for us.
And this leads directly to my next point as Wednesday night’s Dynamite had only one women’s match between Kris Statlander and Riho.
Mercedes Mone soon cometh
I’m going to start with hate. I am a hater. Born and raised.
I love that Sasha Banks felt as though WWE was mistreating her and did something about it. It took balls to walk out of a live Smackdown with Naomi and we should all have that level of intestinal fortitude to stand up to our shitty employers.
But I need to be honest about Mercedes Mone: she’s ok.
AEW has some of the greatest wrestlers on the planet. From Jamie Hayter to Emi Sakura to Willow Nightingale to Mariah May, these women are HOOPERS.
Mercedes Mone is a great worker in a WWE system where every woman was trained to wrestle the same exact style—which was an antiquated style at the time but was ‘revolutionary’ for the WWE audience.
Mone’s in-ring work doesn’t compare to the best of AEW. But neither does her mic work, really and I imagine she’s going to talk in her AEW debut and I imagine there will be plenty of skeptics online ready to mock her.
BUT ALL THAT BEING SAID, Mercedes Mone is perceived as a big enough star where she will be given plenty of screen time—meaning the more talented women in this division will also get more screen time based on proximity.
I don’t know if her first feud will be with Serena Deeb, who declared herself the final “boss” a couple weeks ago or if she’ll get slingshotted right away to a program with Toni Storm, but either way, we are going to see a lot more women on television thanks to the assumed star power of Mercedes Mone.
These women are talented enough to carry Mone through matches. Look at Brit Baker’s title run. Hikaru Shida and Thunder Rosa made the D.M.D. look like a mega star. Plus, I’m not too worried about Mercedes’s mic skills in a modern era where it feels like everyone wants the freedom to say whatever they want without a script while simultaneously going out there and vomiting up nervous word salads that seemingly never end. Mercedes’s character of being the boss or whatever and her forced villain cosplay won’t really matter.
I’m not expecting 5 star matches from Mercedes nor am I expecting a game-changing promo coming anytime soon. But here mere presence will make the women’s division hot and AEW desperately needs to showcase all of the talented women they have on the roster. I’ll take one less Jeff Jarrett deathmatch a week if it means we get to see more Queen Aminata or Abadon on TV.
Random Stray Thoughts:
- I’m all in on Shane Taylor, man. In a modern era where guys don’t throw punches to avoid giving each other head injuries so the punches they do end up throwing look like garbage, Shane Taylor throws some HAYMAKERS. He’s one of the best parts of Collison every Saturday.
- Last year, Sami Zayn should’ve beaten Roman Reigns in his hometown at Elimination Chamber. And now he’s 1000% going to eat a pin so that Chad Gable can win a triple threat match against him and Gunther for the IC title at Wrestlemania 40. Yay.
- It’s insane Damian Priest hasn’t cashed in yet. I’ve watched Seth Rollins dead on the mat like, 20 times in the past year and Priest is just in the back shotgunning beers with Finn Balor. Maybe they need a match, against perhaps Andradre, for the Money in the Bank briefcase so someone WWE actually believes in can win the belt.
- We as a society have evolved past the need for The Acclaimed.
Is Okada going to ruin AEW? Leave a comment below. Respond on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee. Let me know if you’re also joining the Candice LeRae fan club.
