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WWE Payback: Alexa Bliss Makes History After Capturing RAW Women’s Title

By Mark Suleymanov
Published on: 15:10 PST, Apr 30, 2017

Defending the RAW Women’s Championship in her home state of California with her family ringside, Bayley was blissed off after her challenger, Alexa Bliss, walked away victorious.

Not only did Bliss capture RAW’s most prestigious title, she also became the first female since the most recent brand extension to hold both the RAW and SmackDown Live Women’s Championships. Both women are former NXT standouts who joined the main roster and held gold shortly thereafter.

In making history, however, Bliss experienced several obstacles, which included switching brand’s during the recent superstar shakeup, moving from SmackDown Live to RAW. Shortly after the move was made, Bliss spoke to Yahoo Sports about the pros and cons of the switch.

“Some of the cons would definitely be uprooting everything, changing, getting a new schedule, having to meet new people and build relationships with those people almost every eight months now,” she said. “But there are plenty of pros. I still do get to meet new people, it’s a new environment, a new opportunity. I’m really excited.”

One of the pros of the switch, according to Bliss, was the opportunity to rekindle her NXT feud with Bayley — this time on WWE’s main roster. With the evolution of female talent on the roster, including Charlotte, Becky Lynch, Naomi, Sasha Banks, and others, it’s a golden time for golden talent to show off their golden skills.

“Opponent-wise, I’m really excited to work with Bayley. I had a lot of my best matches with her at NXT, she helped me develop a lot as a character and in-ring performer. I’m really excited to work with her again and see how much we’ve both changed in a year. Also, Nia Jax, because we’re really, really close friends and I’m excited to be with her again. It’s going to be awesome.”

It’s ironic in the way Bliss started her main roster success. When she defeated Lynch at WWE TLC in December, she recalled the experience in speaking to The Oakland Press, mentioning her family being ringside for the occasion.

“It was amazing! My parents were there. It was their first WWE event, so that was so cool to be able to have the opportunity to win a title with my family there,” she said. “It was such an amazing moment, especially in this whole era of women empowering and making history.”

In the same interview, where “women empowering” was a major topic, Bliss mentioned a change in culture in the WWE system. The 25-year-old first signed with WWE in May 2013 when NXT just started growing into the brand it is today and before there was a clear opportunity for the female portion of the roster to succeed.

Now, it’s a free-for-all in terms of succeeding; if you’re talented and put in the work, you can succeed in the WWE, according to Bliss.

“I remember even when I started with WWE, it was a different ball game,” she said.

“There were all these restrictions and things we couldn’t do, and now, it’s really empowering to know we can do anything that we want and what the guys can do. It gives women the opportunity to show why we’re more than divas and why we’re WWE superstars.”

The aforementioned superstar shakeup put Charlotte on SmackDown Live and brought Bliss to RAW. Now both women are on the fast track to become a major player on their respective brand and Bliss took that first step in defeating Bayley on Sunday.

[Featured Image by WWE]

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