Awesome / Bayley

"Dreams are yours for the taking."

• Both her #1 contender's match and Women's title match against Sasha Banks and Charlotte Flair respectively. Bayley was well on her way to becoming a star.
• Finally winning the women's title against Sasha Banks at Takeover: Brooklyn. After Sasha (who, despite losing, probably deserves her own CMOA for taking part in such an incredible match) spends the majority of the match tormenting her and attacking her injured hand, Bayley somehow manages to fight back, reverse Sasha's Bank Statement into her own variation of the crossface, put up a fight for the rest of the match, until finally winning the match with a top-rope reverse frankensteiner and then the Bayley to Belly. Beyond that, the match itself was amazing, and the two had the crowd of 15,000 eating out of their hands.
• The build to that is pretty awesome itself, Bayley had to run the gauntlet with her still injured hand to earn her title shot...
  • She evens the score with Emma, who she's been feuding with for the past few months.
  • She beats Charlotte clean with the Bayley-to-Belly off the middle rope.
  • Beats Becky Lynch in a #1 Contender's match despite Becky attacking her injured hand.
• Beating Sasha in another awesome match, this one a 30-minute Ironman match, at the main event of TakeOver: Respect. How awesome was it? PWI named it Match of the Year in 2015, and various other websites have also placed it in part of their top 10 lists for match of the year. Yes, PWI named a woman vs woman match as Match of the Year.
• A minor one, but she delivers a Bayley-to-Belly to Blake (of the Blake & Murphy tag-team), a guy almost twice her size. The fact that a diva just assaulted someone who was originally one-half of one of the most dominant tag teams in NXT, this girl's proven she's got serious muscle.
• She did it again at an NXT house show in July 2016, hitting a Bayley-to-Belly on Bobby Roode. Again, she does this to a man with a renowned resume and is twice her size (Bayley weighs 119 pounds, Roode is 240 pounds of almost all muscle).
• She hit a middle rope version on Nia Jax, who's bigger than both Blake and Roode.
• Finally making an appearance on the main roster as Sasha's mystery partner at Battleground 2016 against Charlotte and Dana Brooke. She got one of the best reactions of the night, showing that the greater WWE audience knows her from her NXT time. Also heartwarming was Sasha's knowing nod before Bayley's music hit and the all-too-genuine smile on her face afterwards, finally seeing her longtime compatriot make it to the big stage.
• At NXT Takeover: Brooklyn II, Bayley finally gets her rematch against Asuka. While she didn't win, before Asuka finished her off, she slapped her. To put this in perspective: Asuka is (in Kayfabe, at least) a very dangerous woman and a slap pretty much seals your fate. It was as if Bayley was daring Asuka to take her out and prove that she wasn't scared of her.
• She finally made her full time main roster debut on the 8/22/16 edition of RAW, stepping up to challenge new Women's Champion Charlotte after she beat Sasha the night before. She easily takes out Dana Brooke in her first match too.
  • Another thing to note is that Vince McMahon was very pleased by the way the crowd reacted to her debut and thinks she can be the next A.J. Lee. That's a huge compliment from the Chairman.
• Finally, on the 2/13/17 edition of RAW, Bayley fulfills her childhood dream by beating Charlotte (with a little help from Sasha Banks to counteract Dana Brooke helping Charlotte) for the RAW Women's Championship in the main event in what was a barn-burner of a match. And with how much of an emotional roller coaster that night was, having the final scene be Bayley going out into the crowd with the title in her hand made it all feel right as it went off the air.
  • To top it up, at Fastlane 2017, Bayley successfully defended the title against Charlotte and finally ended Charlotte's undefeated streak at single matches on PPV.
• Almost a year to her last major Raw match, on the 2/5/18 Raw, Bayley faced Asuka again. While she couldn't snap Asuka's undefeated streak, Bayley took the fight to Asuka, making Asuka earn the victory. And unlike prior-opponent Sasha Banks or the recently-debuting Ronda Rousey, Asuka extended her hand to Bayley and congratulated her on the fight.
• A understated Moment of Awesome for Bayley's reasoning why she's been keeping her emotional distance from Sasha Banks since Elimination Chamber 2018: She understood that it was every woman for themselves in the chamber, but when Sasha kicked Bayley off the chamber pod, she smiled, and that's something that ate away at Bayley, something she simply couldn't ignore, and a clear example that whatever Good Is Dumb habits Bayley had from her time against Alexa Bliss are long gone...
  Bayley: You literally grabbed my hand, you kicked me down that pod, and you watched me fall...and you smiled...and I can't get that picture out of my head. You're supposed to be my best friend, so why was knocking me down so easy, like it meant nothing?
  • That simmering frustration comes to a head a week later when Sasha calls out Bayley on her passive-aggressive behavior from their last couple matches. A heated exchange ensues where Bayley retorts that Sasha trips her up because Sasha knows she can't beat Bayley one-on-one. When Sasha responds that she's at least been a 4-time RAW Women's Champion, Bayley fires back with a response that sets off Sasha enough to attack her.
    Bayley: How long did you keep it?
• On June 25, 2018, Bayley managed to do something that got her her loudest pop in some 2 years: after a long time of abuse, torment, and ridicule at the hands of Sasha, she finally snapped. Immediately after Sasha lost to The Riott Squad, Bayley entered the ring and gave her a deeply cathartic and absolutely vicious No-Holds-Barred Beatdown — attacking Sasha from behind, unloading on her with punches, stomping on her stomach, grabbing her by her hair and launching her face-first into the second turnbuckle, dropping her on the floor outside the ring like a ragdoll, throwing her into the ring steps twice, and topping it off by grabbing her face and screaming at her:
  Bayley: After EVERYTHING you've done to me! These past few years, not just last week! Everything! You think you're better than me, Sasha? You think you're better this whole time!
  • Bayley then says a final remark that is conspicuously censored — at least, in the American broadcast. The Spanish broadcast, however, had a slip-up with the censors due to an audio delay, revealing what she said: "You ain't shit, Sasha." Considering how wholly uncharacteristic such a word is out of the mouth of such a famously kid-friendly wrestler, it truly hammered home that she. Was. Pissed.
• The second round of the WWE Mixed Match Challenge has Bayley teaming with longtime bestie Finn Balor, and there have been some great spots where Bayley demonstrates that she's not afraid to beat up the guys. She and Finn have worked out an assisted backflip cutter and a tandem dropkick, and Bayley has given her Bayley-to-Belly to both Singh Brothers and Lio Rush.
• 1/28/19, Monday Night Raw, and the night when Bayley took the undefeated, untouchable Ronda Rousey to her absolute limit. Sure, you can say that Sasha Banks softened Ronda up at the Royal Rumble, but what Bayley did was double the awesome. First, after Ronda got visibly rattled by the absolute nuclear heat the crowd was giving her, Bayley came out and got the promo back on track by reminding Ronda that there was an open challenge and Bayley was going to get some retribution for Sasha. Second, for over twenty minutes, Bayley got in more offense on Ronda during a match than anyone besides Sasha has. Ronda looked flustered and lost, having to be visibly prompted by the referee and Bayley for certain spots, and Bayley managed to make the match look smooth. While Ronda (of course) got the pin, Bayley got in a number of great hits and locked in a sick flying kneebar for one of the nearest falls of Ronda's entire career.
  • After the match, when Becky Lynch came out to face Ronda, the two Horsewomen flashed each other the "four" sign, with Becky mouthing "great job" at Bayley.
• Stepping up and declaring her wish to be "Champ Champ" Becky Lynch's number-one contender on Smackdown.
  • After Charlotte Flair attempts to belittle her, she responds by slapping the microphone out of her hand and getting in her face as an ultimate silent Bring It. Bayley is still a face, but she's starting to show much more of her NXT side of competitive fire.
  • Not to mention reminding Becky of the stats when it comes to them:
    Bayley: You may have beaten Charlotte more times than you can count, but you and me both know how many times you've beaten me. Zero.
• At Money in the Bank 2019, Bayley categorically proved the above taunt to be legitimate by winning the women's half of the titular match and subsequently cashing in on Charlotte while the latter was in the midst of a singularly arrogant celebration after beating Becky Lynch for the SmackDown Women's Championship. In doing so, Bayley became both the first ever Women's Triple Crown Champion and Grand Slam Champion, the youngest GSC in company history, and the first woman in history to have won the Raw, Smackdown, NXT, and Women's Tag Team Championships. Whoa.
• Upon Sasha Banks' violent return and her subsequent feud with current it-girl Becky Lynch, everyone from the commentators to the interviewers to the fans were wondering how Bayley felt about the Sasha vs Becky feud completely upstaging her being Smackdown champion. A larger question - who would she side with? Worthy Opponent and fellow babyface Becky? Or her Heterosexual Life-Partner and former Arch-Enemy Sasha? On the 9/2 Raw, however, all questions were answered by Bayley with a steel chair to the back of Becky Lynch and an embrace of Sasha. Needless to say, Bayley's first heel turn in her entire CAREER has firmly put her back to dominating the conversation.
• On June 5, 2020, Bayley became the second woman in WWE history to hold two championships at the same time, as she and Sasha became 2x Women's Tag Team Champions.
• She holds the current record for longest reign as Smackdown Women's Champion, at a combined 520 days. This puts her past many of her male peers for longest single reigns with a championship and also AJ Lee's and Nikki Bella's record-breaking Divas Championship runs.
• As of October 11, 2020, she's the first superstar to hold the Smackdown Women's Champion for an entire year, further cementing her heel turn as the shot in the arm that she needed and firmly establishing Smackdown as HER brand in contrast to her horrific Raw run in 2016-2017 (though that was through no fault of her own).
• And on October 23, 2020, Bayley has beaten Charlotte Flair's number of combined days as Women's Champion. This puts her at 950 days, a feat that is second only to Fabulous Moolah's likely-unbeatable 10,000+ day reign though most fans these day flat-out erase Moolah's reigns because of stories of her pimping out girls she trained among other vile deeds.
• Over five years from their NXT classics, fans finally got to see the match they'd been waiting for: Bayley vs. Sasha Banks, for the Smackdown Women's Championship, inside Hell in a Cell. It was only the third women's Cell match in history, and Bayley and Banks made sheer magic for 26 minutes. A particularly vicious spot had Bayley use duct tape and kendo sticks to create a barrier between the ring and the Cell, dropping Sasha onto it face-first. While Sasha managed to make Bayley tap out to the Banks Statement (utilizing a steel chair) and won the match, Bayley gave it her all and gave Sasha the fight of their careers.
• Accomplishing one major goal that she'd never been able to do, Bayley finally captured her first Royal Rumble match win in 2024 as part of her group Damage CTRL, setting the new longevity record in the process at 1:03:03.
  • Due to this win, Bayley is on her way to completing the last accomplishment left for her in WWE - main-eventing Wrestlemania. At 34 years old, Bayley's done it all.
• Celebrating her Rumble win, Bayley at first teases challenging Rhea Ripley...then turns it around to go after Io Sky after realizing Damage CTRL have been plotting behind her back. Even better is how she does it...
  Bayley: You guys done laughing? Watashi wakaru yo. ^note "I understand" or "I know" (the trio react in shock) Yeah, that's Japanese. I picked that up from all the times you guys talked about me behind my back!
  • Kari and Asuka attack her before Bayley fights them off with a pipe, cementing a new Heel–Face Turn.
• After 4 years of hard work, tribulations and heartbreak, Bayley is once again a champion as she beats her former onscreen buddy Io Sky to capture her 2nd Women's Championship and 7th title overall in the company in one of the most heartwarming triumphs in Wrestlemania history.