So I was trying to work this out at 1 AM last night – like all matters of great importance – and I’m missing a piece.
We know it’s an 8 women’s tournament, and we’ll assume it’s set up like a normal tournament. We know Candice vs Lita was a first round match, which leaves us with 6 more spots, and probably three rudas and three tecnicas.
Mickie (t)
Melina (r)
Torrie (t)
Victoria (r)
Maria (t)
????
It could be Beth Phoenix’s return, and I’d be sure of it if it was an extra tecnica spot, but it should be a ruda spot. You really don’t need her (or someone else debuting) just to drop out of the tournament quickly. A new ruda would have to be out first round – Lita’s already thru, so there’s only room for one more, and Melina and Victoria are far more likely. Maybe they can remember they’re employing Jazz? They ARE employing Jazz, right? For some reason, I think she’s in ECW but she’s been used so sparingly, I had to check. (Maybe y’all get lucky and see her play Strip Poker tonight.) It’s a first round spot for someone to lose, it doesn’t really matter.
Anyway, they’ve telegraphed the final to be Mickie vs Lita (which defeats the point of having a tournament instead of just having A Match), so going with that, I’ve got the most obvious outcomes to be
Lita------ |Lita------ Candice--- | |Lita------ Torrie---- | | |Torrie---- | Victoria-- | |Mickie Melina---- | |Melina---- | Maria----- | | |Mickie---- Mickie---- | |Mickie---- whoever---
The problem here is Mickie and Melina apparently have ISSUES. The question is, does anyone who’s writing/producing this care? I’m guessing no. The easiest fix is Melina swapping spots with Victoria and winning no matches, and I don’t think she’d prefer that.
I’m completely overthinking this, because the winner will ultimately be a nonmeaningful wrestler (at least as a wrestler) put in nonmeaningful situations, but I don’t know the the fans have necessarily bought Mickie as delightfully crazy as much as the promotion would like. They really haven’t done much except her hugging Trish and the announcers randomly opting to like her. I think it can work out like that, but you need to allow her to earn it with her actions. She’s either got have three good matches on the road to the title, or help someone the fans already like win the title. (I think that’d be Maria, and to go from Trish to Maria would be quite a trip.)
Now that I’ve wrote all this, they’ll probably have a semifinal end in a no contest and ‘shockingly’ change the tournament final into a three way, but these are the things that keep me up.
Here’s what OUTRAGES me. As the former champion and a dominant female athlete, Lita is a clear #1 seed (followed by Mickie, Victoria, and then who cares). But I certainly don’t buy Candice as #8 behind Maria.
Also they killed the whole tournament right off the bat with a b.s. heel ref non-match but hey. It’s starting to make me think WWE is not invested in pushing women’s wrestling.
I don’t know about Lita being a #1 seed – she did lose to Trish, and she lose to Candice last week. That does not help her elo chess rating.
1) Mickie
2) Melina
3) Lita
4) Victoria
5) Torrie (this is a stretch)
6) Candice
7) Maria
8) ???
works for me
Perhaps Beth Pheonix will be back, Cubs.
How shocking and funny would it be if Mae Young had a seed, huh? Huh?
She’s got MARK HENRY’S SEED, am I right???
…
I’ll show myself out.
Maybe some Smackdown! diva’s CONTRACT HAS EXPIRED!!!!!!!!(!!!!)!!! In this scenario, my money would be on Jillian Hall, mostly so that I don’t have to hear Michael Cole mistakenly remember her as JBL’s image consultant, followed immediately by JBL correcting him by making an unspoken Amy Weber reference.