Emma’s Release: When The Dancing Stops

It’s tough to criticize WWE these days. The company is coming off its best financial quarter since such things were kept track of. Network subscriptions are up. Live event attendance has its ups & downs but is generally fine. The TV ratings aren’t awesome, but they’re not terrible either. WWE is doing well by pretty much any business metric you want to throw out there.

They only had to lay three people off this week. Could you imagine the bloodshed that would have happened if it wasn’t their best quarter ever?

With all due respect to Darren Young & Summer Rae, there was one release that stood out. A performer that rates among the most popular in the history of NXT was let go. She had a world of potential, but for whatever reason, the WWE main roster wasn’t the right place for her to realize it.

There’s been something of a women’s wrestling boom in Australia in recent years. Various promotions have popped up and a number of women have established themselves as future superstars. Billie Kay & Peyton Royce are in NXT now after years of working their way up the ranks. Madison Eagles has held the SHIMMER Championship on two occasions. Toni Storm (New Zealand born but Australian raised) impressed folks in the Mae Young Classic & I for one certainly hope she’s in WWE soon. There will certainly be more coming and you can probably ask Mathew Sforcina for information on them.

Tenille Dashwood was one of the Australian women that came along in the 2000s wanting to make pro wrestling her thing. She started out in PWA Australia and eventually made her way to Canada to train in Lance Storm’s wrestling school. She got some work in North America & some notoriety largely due to her connection to Lance, including a featured spot on the World of Hurt reality show that followed students at the school.

WWE took notice and signed her. She arrived in Tampa, Florida in 2012 & was part of the move from the original Florida Championship Wrestling facility to the WWE Performance Center. Tenille had the ability. She needed something to make people take notice. That something…was bad dancing.

I still don’t really understand it. There’s something hypnotic about it, sure. But Emma’s dancing probably shouldn’t have gotten over to the heights it did in NXT with the Full Sail audience. That’s not a bad thing though, the best things in wrestling never should have gotten over to the heights they did. The People’s Elbow. The Worm. Emma’s dancing. All kind of goes hand in hand if you ask me.

Emma got over to the point where they had to move her onto the main roster. At the time, there hadn’t been all that many NXT acts moving up. The Shield guys did pretty well for themselves. The Wyatt Family were doing good things. At the time, there wasn’t any indication that NXT acts wouldn’t translate to WWE.

WWE creative saw Emma as a silly dancer. When you think silly, you think Santino Marella.

Once upon a time, being linked with Santino Marella was a good thing. He was an entertaining fella. He was over and he could get other people over. By the time 2014 rolled around, Santino was past his expiration date. People kinda liked him, but weren’t heartbroken if he wasn’t around. Getting hooked up with Santino meant you were doing silly stuff that wasn’t all that important & wouldn’t get you noticed. Emma getting paired with Santino right out of the box typecast her into a certain role. People that didn’t watch NXT & didn’t know anything about Emma other than she hung out with Santino and danced funny didn’t see the appeal. It was tough to blame them.

Santino’s retirement didn’t make things much better, and Emma headed back down to NXT to build a new character. She quit the dancing and became evil. Some people really liked it, and eventually she made her way back to the main roster. It didn’t last all that long before Emma suffered a back injury & went out of action.

Emmalina emerged in late 2016. Apparently, creative came up with the idea of seeing some of Emma’s pictures on social media. They had no idea how attractive she was until seeing her Instagram, which says something about either WWE Creative or Instagram. They built up the debut of Emmalina for four months with constant advertisements. Finally, she debuted on Raw.

To quote Krusty the Klown, what the hell was that? Turns out that the folks backstage weren’t happy with how Emmalina’s rehersals went. Whatever they were hoping to accomplish with the character wasn’t coming across. So they had Emma come out and do that. If there had been any chance of Emma catching on with the portion of the WWE Universe that wasn’t predisposed to like her from her NXT days, it was pretty well done right there.

She had her big comeback with her previous heel persona…then immediately went back to doing very little. Emma was a mid-card character in the Raw women’s division. Recent booking seemed to show that they knew she was capable of more. She was booked against the debuting Asuka at TLC. Most people thought Asuka would kill her pretty easily, but there were reports that Emma was picked for the match because they’d had a good match before in NXT, and creative felt that a good match would do more for her than a basic squash.

You know we’re at a strange place in wrestling when it seems like fans want squashes more than creative types do.

Emma had a competitive match with Asuka at TLC, and then again on Raw. This seemed fine. Then she got released on Sunday and we all wondered why they bothered with the competitive matches. Common sense dictates that if Emma was heading out, there wouldn’t be any reason to protect her against Asuka.

Why did she leave? Rumors & innuendo dictate that WWE creative wasn’t too fond of her. Based on how she was used, I believe that part. She was often vocal on social media about how she wasn’t being featured on WWE television, which can be a bit problematic. On one hand, you can use social media to advance your message & get people interested in what you have going on. On the other hand, people within the company can get tired of your message & irritated that people are getting behind it. WWE creative saw that people were interested in Emma. They decided to try & find another way to appease those people.

Emma is gone. She was the first Aussie woman to get signed by WWE, paving the way for folks like Peyton Royce, Billie Kay & hopefully countless others to follow. Emma might not have started the Women’s Revolution on her own, but she was one of the people that helped make it happen. She was very popular among her peers, as the response within the WWE locker room to newcomer Lio Rush’s attempt at humor showcased.

Unfortunately, she was one of the first NXT call-ups to show that what works in NXT doesn’t always translate to the main roster. It wasn’t her fault, but people within WWE that aren’t too high on the whole developmental system will use her as an example in debates. “Sure, they’re super popular in Full Sail. But will that stuff work in Omaha?”

It might not. Especially if creative has no idea how to use the people showing up on the roster.

Tenille Dashwood didn’t fit into WWE’s plans. She’ll fit in somewhere else.