Review: WWE Evolution 2025
Live from Atlanta!
Arrivals: Bayley! Lyra Valkyria is actually just standing around using her telephone like a zoomer. Becky Lynch is also on her phone, very important. Tiffany Stratton is touching curtains. Trish Stratus gets out of an elevator. Iyo Sky is “confidently dynamic,” according to Joe Tessitore. Rhea Ripley has one of those stupid ass Nu-Metal beanie babies everyone is carrying around and will be for three to six more months, so that her young fans know she’s definitely still “with it” at 28.
Oh good here’s Stephanie McMahon, as we all know she is the greatest champion of women’s wrestling in all of history. Basically its most important figure. She’s going to speak with Joe Tessitore. I cannot listen to this. I just can’t. If I do, if I listen to her, if I get to rambling about it, if I watch Tessitore stand there with that Troy McClure grin of his, nodding along, we’ll be here an hour of reading time. So let’s get to the stuff with the actual talented people who have ever added anything that mattered, and when they say “we,” they actually are part of “we.”1
Becky Lynch vs Lyra Valkyria vs Bayley
For Lynch’s WWE Women’s Intercontinental championship
Cole brings up Bayley’s “Horsewomen” history and calls her the “fourth” of them, because she was called up to the “main roster” last, but Barrett says it’s wrong to call her the fourth of them, though he does not suggest an alternative.2
Outstanding crowd atmosphere to kick this off.
Lyra has had such an amazing breakout year, that first push last year as Becky’s Friend was ill-conceived, but she was working hard and having good matches, which planted the seed for her to really put it together once Becky was gone for a while, which just came from her being really fucking good, and week to week, fans recognized more and more that she’s a serious high-end talent. She’s become herself now; ties to Becky and to Bayley still, of course, but she isn’t just a branch of either tree.
Great pace, great action. A terrific chemistry between all of them, every 1-on-1 and the three of them together, and feels less intricately plotted moment-to-moment than a lot of WWE multi-person matches do; it probably isn’t, realistically, but they make it work more organically than you see too often.3