There was plenty of heat behind Trick Williams’ promo on the most recent episode of “NXT.” Williams’ promo presented him as a hardworking and generous babyface who was betrayed by somebody who he considered family — all of the ingredients to craft a legendary babyface run were wrapped up in his effortlessly cool speech, and delivered neatly to the “NXT” audience with a bow on top. He issued a challenge to Carmelo Hayes for a match at Stand and Deliver, which has been a highly anticipated match-up in the “NXT” fanbase for a long while now, and he promised to pay back Hayes for all the betrayal and the backstabbing, plus a little more. The segment went well, and with his bold energy and confident storytelling, Williams set the tone for the next three weeks of intense feuding before Stand and Deliver.

If Williams had ended the segment there, it would have been perfect. If it was perfect, though, then we wouldn’t be here.

What was arguably the hottest portion of the segment, both in its content and its subsequent virality, was the culmination of an encounter with Meta Four. Noam Dar confronted Williams alongside Oro Mensah, Jakara Jackson, and Lash Legend, and to say that things escalated quickly afterwards is an understatement. By the time the segment ended, Williams had dropped Dar and Mensah, and was face to face with Legend. One suave motion later, and Williams and Legend were in the middle of the ring, swapping spit in front of God and everyone.

Legend went from dead-lifting Otis in front of an absolutely electric crowd in 2023, to being a liplocking partner to the man that just dropped two of her stablemates in 2024. Isn’t that just a bit odd?

This is not an attack on public displays of affection, or women showing romantic aspects of themselves in public. This is an attack on the gratuitous (and frankly, useless) use of romance in WWE storylines, and how it translates to poor and inconsistent booking in the women’s division specifically. We’ve seen it with Alexa Bliss and Braun Strowman during their run in the WWE Mixed Match Challenge (which should be brought back, but that is a Hot Take ramble for another day), we’ve seen it with Bobby Lashley and Lana and Liv Morgan (that aged poorly), and we’ve seen it countless times in the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression eras. Whenever a man and a woman co-occupy a ring, there is bound to be some sort of angle where one of them has a crush on the other. More often than not, it spirals into a whole storyline that is, honestly, more trouble than what it is worth.

Love can be a powerful motivator in a narrative, absolutely. Even outside the world of romantic fiction, there are several romance angles in fiction that heighten the stakes of a character’s development, and a narrative’s general arc. However, that is when they are done well — when romantic storylines are done poorly, they are embarrassing to read at best, and objectifying at worst. Unfortunately, WWE has a bad habit of writing the latter: poorly done romance angles that have no real payoff for the characters involved with them. The female participants in these storylines are often the worst affected: Lashley and Strowman were alright, booking-wise, after the storylines, and their romantic escapades just became a blip in their career. However, Lana, Morgan, and even Lita had to put their careers and momentum on pause to try this sexual experiment, that was catered towards the male narrative in one way or another. While their careers may not have been ended by it, that was all still wasted time that had absolutely no professional payoff.

To take someone with as much potential as Lash Legend — solid branding, incredible athleticism, previous WNBA talent — and so haphazardly stick her in a dead-end romance angle is crazy. Williams doesn’t benefit from this either: in fact, this muddies his storyline with Hayes, which should be crystal clear less than a month away from Stand and Deliver. There is literally nobody who benefits from this romantic storyline, so who was this made for? What purpose does their careless make-out session serve?

There are other ways to go viral in the wrestling sphere, and this is not it. It has been established that romance angles are a waste of time for both male and female talent, so there is little reason for this segment to even exist — especially so close to Stand and Deliver, where the storylines should be singularly focused and heightened in its stakes. Williams and Legend’s segment might have been hot in passion, but frankly, it is lukewarm in every other sense.

Written by Angeline Phu