WWE Superstar Dana Brooke was brought to the main roster months back. The reasoning for it was pretty simple. Both Tamina and Naomi were out, and WWE felt that they needed another strong female tandem together. Both Emma and Dana Brooke were a well known team down in WWE NXT. Emma had revitalized her career in NXT and became a serious contender. When WrestleMania time came around, she had the opportunity to be called back up.
Due to the Tamina and Naomi loss, WWE felt that calling Dana Brooke up to be paired with Emma would be quite helpful to the Women’s Division. Emma was a strong veteran who clearly could keep Dana under her wing. Due to the fact that Brooke was useful simply due to need on the main roster, WWE felt that things would work out despite the inexperience. Sadly the same week Brooke came up, Emma was injured at a live event. She had to end up getting surgery and now she’ll be out for months.
According to Daily Wrestling News , this led WWE to putting Dana Brooke with WWE Women’s Champion Charlotte. WWE knew that Brooke was still pretty green, so they felt putting her with the Flairs would be helpful to her. It would be giving her veteran leadership that would hopefully help her improve, even if it was just with Charlotte. Interestingly, WWE considered two options for Dana Brooke.
The idea was pushed to have her join Charlotte, but another idea was that they could pair her with Eva Marie. Due to Eva having several issues herself, and also being green, WWE went with Charlotte. It was probably a very good plan on WWE’s part, as there would be no improvement on Dana Brooke’s end if she was paired with Eva Marie.
Eva Marie is someone the company would love to use more, but she lacks skill in so many areas that it has become tough for the company to utilize her in the ways they would like. She fits the old school “model type” that WWE loved to hire in the mid to late 2000s, but that is kind of the problem. Today’s fans have seen brilliant performances by the women of WWE, so the company can’t get away with putting women out there that can’t perform since the fans won’t take kindly to them.
In fact, Eva was booed so much in WWE NXT that the brand writers just went ahead and made her a heel. Her mic work improved greatly, but her in-ring work had not improved much at all. This is not an indictment on her training staff, as she has had the best in the world to work with and even had one-on-one training with Brian Kendrick. She even adopted his finisher, the Slice Bread #2, which she calls the Sliced Red #2.
This is the very reason why WWE has not used her as much as they would have liked, but she will continue to be put out there off and on. For her part, Dana Brooke was just like Eva Marie. She was a fitness model who competed in a variety of fitness competitions before WWE. She was an athlete before WWE, as well; she competed in gymnastics for about 18 years. This allowed her transition as an athlete to become much easier than that of Eva’s.
While Eva was a soccer player for some time, it didn’t help her as much as one would hope. Brooke’s gymnastics background has allowed her to improve a lot since she arrived. While still considered green for today’s standards, she could very well get better with the help of someone like Charlotte. WWE was smart to put Dana Brooke with Charlotte, as it allowed for them to push Ric Flair out so that Brooke could pretty much take his spot and at least compete with the other women. This was a partnership that was just as much about Charlotte as it was about Brooke.
[Image via WWE]