There were a lot of interesting moments from the “NXT” women’s division this week, including a promo from the champion, Tiffany Stratton. Unfortunately, they all happened backstage. In terms of in-ring contests, we got Blair Davenport vs. Kelani Jordan and Ivy Nile vs. Kiana James, and it wasn’t exactly stellar.

Davenport vs. Jordan was by far the better of the two matches, which makes sense — Jordan is still extremely green, but she sells well and she has some fun offense, and Davenport is Davenport. We’re not totally sure about Dana Brooke kind of snapping and trying to beat people up in the name of preventing Jordan from experience the kind of WWE hardship she experienced, but at least Brooke is actually getting something to do for the first time in a while. There are a lot of ways that kind of story could go off the rails, and we’re skeptical f the blow-off match if it’s building to Brooke vs. Jordan, but we can reserve judgment for now.

James vs. Nile though … man. This was just not good. James used to be one of our favorite members of the division in terms of her in-ring skill, but that hasn’t shown up lately; instead we get stuff like Nile selling a kick that missed her head by what looked like a full yard. More egregious than that though, and the real reason we’re handing out a “hated,” is the fact that James vs. Nile didn’t even matter in its own right. It was just a storytelling device for the continuation of the Schism/Creed Brothers feud, which has now become a Schism/D’Angelo Family feud. We’ll admit that this is the first time in a while that Schism has actually creeped us out a little — the whole group banging on the ring apron during Nile’s match, then pointing the way for James to leave ringside so they could focus on Nile, was legitimately chilling — but we don’t like a women’s division match getting shanghaied into the service of any men’s division story, much less one as stupid as “Where in the world are the Creed Brothers?” Remember a few weeks ago when it looked like they might be doing something interesting with Ivy, like have Schism try to get her to join them with the Creeds gone or something? Yeah, those were the days. Here, she’s basically just a damsel in distress getting rescued from the woke cult by the mafia. Wrestling is weird.