There wasn’t a ton of women’s division content on “Raw” these week, especially after Rhea Ripley attacked Liv Morgan before their match even got started, and that sucks. However, the match we did get, Becky Lynch vs. Zoey Stark, was very good. Lynch prevailed, of course, getting her win back on Stark from two weeks ago and setting up another match with Stratus at SummerSlam, but it was Stark that jumped off the screen for us, even in defeat.

One of the reasons Stark stands out from the pack as much as she does (besides the fact that she’s been booked extremely well and put in an act with one of the great performers in WWE history) is that her presentation doesn’t exactly match her in-ring style. She looks like a striker, like she’s going to spend all her time going for big kicks and knees. And she does do that. But she also has a high-flying element to her game, with a lot of springboard stuff and even some top rope moves. It’s an inherently fun combination, and it allows her to control the pace of her matches by going back and forth between her two major flavors of wrestling move. She already feels like she belongs on “Raw,” but it’s more than that — unless most other “NXT” graduates, Stark legitimately feels like the future of the division, and putting on highly competitive matches with people like Lynch will only bolster that feeling. We also really enjoyed the way this match was structured, particularly the spot where Stark and Stratus went back to their previous winning strategy of the distraction roll-up, only for Lynch to kick out.

We’re looking forward to Stratus vs. Lynch 2 at SummerSlam, but in another way, we’re even more excited about Stark’s long-term future in WWE.