YMMV / Becky Lynch

• Accidental Innuendo: During a backstage interview after she and Sami Zayn were eliminated from the Mixed Match Challenge, Sami, at one point talked about eating cake at a local Philly bakery. Becky proceeded to corpse after hearing about it.
• Americans Hate Tingle: She's beloved in her native Ireland and to be fair, didn't catch a negative reaction in the U.S. until her Face–Heel Turn in SHIMMER. However, her usual babyface routine got an incredibly negative response from the WWE NXT crowds, who are usually happy to see independent and foreign "darling" wrestlers. Once she toned the "I'm Irish!" stuff way down and shifted to the moshpit (and later steampunk) gimmick, she became beloved again; they liked her well enough, it's just the gimmick they found too stereotypical.
• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • The two weeks of the Oireland gimmick, and her time as a heel in the Team BAE alliance. She successfully broke out following her feud with Sasha Banks and switch to a steampunk look.
  • The time between losing her first Smackdown women's title and her legendary turn following SummerSlam 2018 is considered as this for many. Becky herself likes to point out how proud she is from having lifted herself from the literal bottom at the pre-show of WrestleMania 34 to the main event of WrestleMania 35 in one year.
  • Her first reign as RAW Women's Champion is also considered as this for some people. Her feud with Lacey Evans was poorly handled for a number of reasons, whether it was due to the relatively green Evans being hot-shotted from developmental in NXT straight into the title picture, the dragged-out length of the story, or the later involvement of her real-life boyfriend Seth Rollins. Though many agreed the reign got back on track once her feud with Sasha Banks started, it once again came to a screeching halt when she was forced to team with Charlotte and compete for the Women's Tag Titles (while failing to capture said titles and losing the feud).
• Awesome Ego: Most of the time in WWE, if a heel gets so popular that the fans start cheering for them no matter what, the heel will keep making at least token insults to the crowd to try and get them to stop chanting their name. Becky, on the other hand, embraces that fan support. She doesn't play to the crowd—or acknowledge them much at all, really—but if you watch her right before she cuts a promo, while the crowd is chanting "BECKY! BECKY! BECKY!" and she's got the mic at the ready, you'll see she looks around nodding and smiling, like she's thinking "Yeah, I totally deserve this."
• Awesome Music: Her WWE entrance theme, "Celtic Invasion". As Becky's popularity increases, fans take it to sing along her entrance theme. This was first done at NXT TakeOver Unstoppable where despite her lost, the fans pay their respect by singing her theme. Following her debut as "The Man", the fans sing along whenever her entrance is played and for a while after it has ended.
• Badass Decay: While still higher in popularity than she was prior to SummerSlam 2018, it appears that WWE's attempts to capitalize into her surprise popularity boom with the fans actually made her character as "The Man" gradually lose some steam. After winning the 2019 Women's Royal Rumble, a strange dynamic in the creative approach to Becky's character caused some to see her push as becoming both forced and weak at the same time.
  
  On the one hand, her marketing as "The Man" had gone into overdrive to the point of taking over her entrance graphics. By this point, WWE no longer tried to shoehorn her into the role of a heel, and she has been heavily shilled heading into an encounter with Rousey for the Raw Women's Championship set to be the first ever female main event of WrestleMania, while getting to cite herself as being responsible for this feat. On the other hand, any notions that she would be organically booked as a female counterpart to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin have been shot down hard; she has been routinely shushed, shouted down, and lectured by others in promos such as Rousey, Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and on several occasions Charlotte Flair herself, while rarely getting a chance to deliver a proper comeback until she got on Twitter the next day; had very few wins on television since the injury; tapped out after spending a mere six seconds in an Asuka Lock at Royal Rumble 2019 and begged and gimped her way through two injury angles (her own and Lana's) into winning the Women's Rumble match; and later most infamously spent an entire episode of Monday Night Raw figuring out whether to apologize for attacking her bosses so she could keep her title shot, then eventually doing so (reluctantly) only for Vince McMahon to take the title shot away from her anyway by suspending her until after WrestleMania and replacing her with Charlotte Flair. On top of ruining the idea of the one-on-one dream match between Becky and Ronda as well as tethering Charlotte to Becky's momentum yet again, all of this has cut away from the "dangerous girl who's lost her last trace of mercy and is coming for what's hers" vibe that first put Becky over the top.
  
  However, given this was followed up by subsequent break-ins and attacks on the part of Becky, as close to Stone Cold-style as one could get while selling a badly-injured leg, as well as an utterly heated and personal Worked Shoot exchange between her and Ronda on Twitter which went well beyond PG or kayfabe and was reported to have left Vince utterly furious (thus adding supplementary heat to the story), this criticism may have been heeded, if not intentionally invoked as an ebb and flow to the match's build.
• Designated Villain:
  • At SummerSlam 2018, Becky turned heel and attacked Charlotte Flair after the latter's victory in their three-way Women's Championship match, no doubt jealous of Charlotte once again stealing her spotlight in what was supposed to be her moment. Two days later on SmackDown, Becky pulled a typical heel speech, claiming how the fans were only half-heartedly there for her and she is tired of being underused. Despite being the heel, Becky actually has had the fans cheering for her for years and the speech made her even more beloved, with legions on Twitter declaring in defiance to the booking that they will never boo her. More than a few even pointed out that Charlotte and her father Ric Flair betrayed Becky over championship gold first in 2016, and not only were they never paid back for this but Becky seemed to forget about it to promptly resume their friendship as soon as Charlotte arrived on SmackDown, only for Charlotte to repeatedly emerge as top face with Becky's support as the memetic "sidekick"; thus, despite being the logical thing for a competitor to do, Charlotte unflinchingly taking the championship spotlight at a point when Becky had clearly earned the best shot at it was seen as more disrespect.
  • She was again treated as this, or at least as the aggrieved face going a bit too far^* similar to Roman Reigns when he beat the hell out of Triple H at the end of TLC 2015, at Elimination Chamber 2019 by the commentators (except Renee Young) when she attacked both Ronda Rousey and Charlotte despite being suspended at the time and called her out for being jealous and attempting to ruin the main event of WrestleMania, ignoring the fact she was screwed by Vince McMahon for taking away her WrestleMania opportunity and given it to Charlotte (the clear Heel of the angle by this point) who not only injured her recently healed knee but had been mocking her for months. Even Michael Cole, who is usually the Face commentator, who normally supported Anti-Hero wrestlers who were screwed by an authoritative figure, agreed with Heel commentator Corey Graves that she should have been arrested.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Becky is arguably more popular as a heel than as a face, especially as of her heel turn in late 2018. She's ubiquitously considered one of the best wrestlers (male or female) on the roster, a fantastic trash-talker, and perhaps most of all, easy to root for as an underdog against women who were hand-picked to be great athletes from birth like Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Slowly became this as she climbed up in the NXT Women's division, as people came to see the value in her as more than just a lackey for Sasha Banks. See Crowning Moment of Heartwarming above for how that ended up. She was previously this in SHIMMER - as she didn't make too many appearances but was fondly remembered for years after her retirement. What's more is that the only time Paige got booed during her heel turn promo was when she insulted Becky. And so far, Becky is the only Face that has ever been cheered going against Sasha Banks on the main roster.
  • Throughout the fall of 2018 and the start of 2019, Becky Lynch began to amass an astronomical fanbase unlike anything seen before in modern WWE; her popularity absolutely exploded when she turned heel at SummerSlam 2018 and attacked Charlotte after their title match, to which the crowd loudly cheered for her. WWE tried persistently, bless them, to turn the fans against her after that, with each successive attempt falling flatter and flatter until Becky's concussion at the hands of Nia Jax just before Survivor Series 2018 - to say nothing of her absurdly badass No-Sell of the injury immediately afterward - made them give up entirely and deliberately seat Becky at the top of the ladder. When the latter incident gets you unironically compared to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, well...
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Good LORD. Since her heel turn in 2021, her outfits and hairstyles have went from slightly more sexy to very elaborate and strange. One particular shirt trended on Twitter and even got reported on in the mainstream news media for resembling the "puffy pirate shirt" Jerry Seinfeld wore on an episode of Seinfeld. And then there's the ensemble that she wore for several weeks◊ (including WrestleMania 38) that drew comparisons, from places such as Reddit to Spanish wrestling site Solowrestling, to Pris◊ from Blade Runner. She clearly takes after hubby Seth Rollins in that regard!
• Foe Yay Shipping: Despite their intense rivalry in the ring, a lot of fans ship Becky with Charlotte Flair online and there are loads of fanfics for the two together.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2016, WWE released a video in YouTube where several superstars, one of them being Becky, reenact "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's infamous King of the Ring speech in 1996, and a year later during a WWE Live Event in England in 2017, Becky performed a Stone Cold Stunner on James Ellsworth, even imitating Austin's double bird gesture with her little fingers. Becky's new gimmick in late 2018 has fans comparing her with the Texas Rattlesnake himself.
• Improved Second Attempt: Becky's reign as NXT Woman's Champion in 2023 is one to Charlotte's reign in 2020. Charlotte's reclamation of the title was highly criticized at the time due to her already excessive list of accomplishments, as well as the fact that she rarely interacted with, or helped elevate the other women of the division. The worst offense was that when she dropped the title to Io Shirai during a triple threat match with Rhea Ripley: Io pinned Rhea to capture the title, meaning Charlotte wasn't even defeated in her last appearance for the brand. Becky on the other hand, regularly defended her championship more often than Charlotte, interacting with women who had hardly been featured on the main roster shows. Additionally, Becky ended up cleanly dropping the belt to Lyra Valkyria in a singles match, meaning unlike with Charlotte, Becky actually put over her opponent on her way back to the main roster.
• Iron Woobie: On the main-roster Becky has been betrayed by all three of her closest companions, both her friends from her early career (Paige and Natalya) and her friend from her comeback (Charlotte Flair), and remained a face all throughout (the only female wrestler on the main-roster to not be a heel). And unlike every other Horsewoman, Becky has only won a single title in her time in WWE, which she held for about three months before returning to a usual pattern of having really good matches and ultimately losing. That, combined with her unlikely road to the company, her injury-studded past that led to he retirement, plus her constantly cheerful and positive outlook in interviews where she's grateful to just be in the company has lead to her being a real life version of the trope, not to mention being translated big time into massive support for her after her late 2018 Face–Heel Turn, leading WWE to having to shift her into an Anti-Hero.
• Memetic Badass: The incident in which Nia Jax fractured her face with a stiff punch, only for Becky to carry on all while blood poured from her face, cemented her reputation as fearless and tough-as-nails and had not just he fans, but the entire Women's division of SmackDown cheering on the following episode when she walked out to the ring, inviting comparisons with Stone Cold Steve Austin.
• Memetic Loser: Not with her ring ability or match record, but rather just her downright terrible luck with allies. Becky is infamous over the fact that the poor woman cannot keep a friend to save her life leading to her being compared to Sting with the amount of unfair backstabbing she is going through. Taken up to eleven when La Luchadora, the Masked Luchador disguise Becky created to fight Alexa Bliss, is later taken by an unknown person (later revealed to be Mickie James) to distract Becky and cause her to lose against Bliss, which means technically Becky was betrayed by her own gag. Small wonder some have started calling her "The New" (or "The Female") "Sting". Perhaps the cherry on top of this was that the last straw for Becky was Charlotte Flair winning the SmackDown Women's Championship from under her; Sting having most famously being betrayed by Charlotte's father Ric.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The way she pronounced the word "disgusting" in a backstage segment with Sasha Banks. Even Sasha mocked her for it in a later segment. It was briefly an Ascended Meme and the name of her finisher (as the "Disgusting Armbar"), but the name was quickly changed.
  • "Stone Cold" Becky Lynch, sometimes accompanied by any of Stone Cold's Signature Lines and catch-phrases such as "Becky 3:16 says I just whopped your Lass!".
  • "We could never boo Becky."^* Following her heel turn in 2018, WWE had made Becky did several heel promos to gather heat, but her massive popularity prevents fans from booing her.
  • Did you know that Seth and Becky are in a relationship?^note The announce team's constant (and sometimes unnecessary) remarks about the couple led to many people in the IWC parodying them.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Commented on this before she returned to wrestling. She was beloved in her home country, despite her wrestling character abroad being "a jigging Irish leprechaun" (in her own words). Showing how this trope can change, the reaction to her doing it in NXT was extremely negative.
• Narm:
  • To some, her rocker chick character looked awkward and unnatural as a heel.
  • Her deep voice combined with her thick Irish accent can make it very hard for some to take her promos seriously... at least until 2018, where her heel (sorta?) persona and positioning against opponents like Charlotte and Ronda Rousey allow her to lean hard into her natural contralto voice tone. If anything, some would even say that her persona is enhanced by this as opposed to being hindered. When she makes a threat, she sounds like someone you had best take seriously.
• Narm Charm: As a Face, her frequent puns. She's clearly going for So Unfunny, It's Funny and since it's clear that she's a Pungeon Master in real life, they seem very natural. They serve to make her Adorkable.
• Nightmare Fuel: In a particular spot during her Unstoppable match against Sasha Banks, Sasha locks in a modified armbar and then, to add more pressure, stands on Becky's arm as it's being wrenched past her shoulder blade. It legitimately looked like Becky's arm was about to be snapped in half or ripped out of its socket, the move was THAT brutal. If you can stomach it, it can be seen here◊.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Her change in gimmick to a mosh pit girl began her redemption with the NXT fans, and a well done Face–Heel Turn along with more chances to show off her incredible in-ring abilities completed the rescue.
  • Detractors didn't like how she didn't have a defined character on NXT. When she moved up to the main roster, she kept the steampunk look and started incorporating her love of puns - establishing herself as an Adorkable Genki Girl. It's one of the few instances where the main roster has improved something from NXT.
• Rooting for the Empire:
  • When Becky turned on Charlotte after their match at SummerSlam '18, she was outright cheered, while Charlotte received enormous boos. While WWE intended to make it look like Becky was ungrateful for even thinking she deserved a title match over Charlotte, the fans did not buy it. Charlotte by that point had had 8 unnecessary title reigns; it was apparent to everyone that Becky was the one being held back. Though Becky was portrayed as a heel on the following episode of Smackdown, criticizing the audience by saying how they never believed in her, the fans were having none of it. It was so unconvincing that the creative team quickly backpedaled on the villainous aspect of Becky's character after this.
  • Following her return at SummerSlam 2021, Becky becomes a genuine heel and becomes an even more arrogant character than her previous gimmick and actually done many heelish actions. Despite this, fans' support over Becky does not waver and is still wildly cheer especially as to how she is able to put up a good match with her opponents and still retaining her work over the microphone.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The week before Survivor Series 2018, Becky lead the SmackDown women's roster in a raid onto their Raw counterparts; in the ensuing brawl, Lynch took a punch to the face from Nia Jax that resulted in legitimate facial fractures and a concussion. Becky proceeded to completely No-Sell it and continued beating the living hell out of Ronda Rousey, all while blood poured from her nose, leading to the iconic image of Becky on the arena steps telling the Raw women's roster to Bring It.
  • The Raw after Money in the Bank 2020 gave a twofer. First, Becky revealed that the women's Money in the Bank ladder match the night before wasn't for a contract for a women's title match, but actually for her Raw Women's Championship, meaning that the winner (Asuka) was now the champion. Then there was the reason why Becky gave up the title: She's pregnant.
• Signature Scene: Her injury at the hands of Nia Jax in the leadup to Survivor Series 2018 and the subsequent No-Sell of said injury, which catapulted her to the top of the company (and arguably even mainstream professional wrestling). It's generally agreed that the most indelible image to come out of the angle was the final one: Becky standing on the bleachers above the crowd with her face and arms wreathed in blood and her nose obviously broken, raising her arms in triumph in defiance of it all.
• Spiritual Successor: She's already drawing Lita comparisons.
  • Her second SmackDown Women's title reign in 2018 was fairly similar to the one that AJ Styles went on with the WWE Championship just a couple of years prior. Just like Styles, Becky played a cocky kind of heel, but not in the way most WWE heels are, as the crowd absolutely couldn't get enough of her to the point that even the most popular faces had trouble getting any cheers against her.
  • Of course, there's also the prevailing comparison: "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Like Austin, Becky is an aggressive, foulmouthed Anti-Hero with virtually unparalleled charisma and godlike popularity with wrestling fans, and all attempts to turn her into a proper heel have been met with overwhelming scorn and subsequently fallen flat. The fact that Austin himself is a fan of Becky's and has praised her on numerous occasions has only fueled the parallels.
• Strangled by the Red String: While Becky/Seth Rollins was a popular ship way before they actually started dating each other, the implementation of their relationship in kayfabe didn't come without problems. For starters, when the couple was finally acknowledged on the shows, it was just casually shoehorned in as an established fact with little regard for incorporating their characters. The best creative could come up with were "awkward" backstage interactions which had them appear very stilted, with Becky seeming to wear the pants over the Universal Champion. This was also during a time when the two were locked into lackluster feuds with... Baron Corbin and Lacey Evans, whom very few people cared about. This all played a large hand in reducing the badassery of "The Man" in addition to making Seth look like a chump.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A proper feud with Nia Jax never happened despite Nia being the one who (in)famously bloodied Becky's face that cemented her superstardom.
• Tough Act to Follow: She's one of the "Four Horsewomen of NXT" alongside Sasha Banks, Bayley and Charlotte Flair. They are the top women's stars (and some of the top stars overall) on NXT, and now that all four of them are on the main roster and all four have at least one women's championship under their belts, it's fair to say expectations are very high for the next wave of women's talent on the developmental brand.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Despite being the heel during her 2018 feud with Charlotte Flair, Becky had the fans cheering for her, even after giving out a typical heel speech and peppering in jabs at the fans. After hogging the spotlight for three years, fans have had enough of Charlotte Flair, The Ace who's already spent the majority of her first three years on the main roster^* plus one special Raw appearance during her NXT run within any one of EIGHT championship reigns and is clearly being prepped for more of the same^* thanks to rumors of a possible future showdown with Ronda Rousey, and wanted Becky Lynch, the underdog who was underutilized and worked hard for years only to blindsided and betrayed at every turn with only a single three-month reprieve as a champion, to win. This sentiment was so loud and vociferous both in the arenas and on social media that WWE couldn't last two weeks before at least courting a shift in the story from straightforward Charlotte-face, Becky-heel booking to two defiant former friends each with valid points. Ultimately, they did stick to trying to make her the villain, mocking Edge's neck injury, repeatedly attacking Charlotte Flair in front of children and making her cry, and engaging in more Unsportsmanlike Gloating than the Rock, but they have yet to actually make the fans turn on her. The limit of their changes appears to be having her refrain from throwing abuse at the audience that clearly loves her. Vince McMahon's frustration can be tasted when, on the Survivor Series go-home episode of Raw, Ronda Rousey starts ranting about how Becky is a spoilt, entitled millenial who needs to be put in her place; this despite Becky clawing for every inch she has and Ronda being a millennial herself, with the two being born just days apart from each other.
  • While it is common for a Heel to be a Sore Loser after losing their championship, Becky, after losing her Raw Women's Championship to Bianca Belair at WrestleMania 38, is instead treated in sympathetic light. Keep in mind that before she became the Man in 2018, Becky has to bust her ass for years after being ignored and forgotten by management for years. Not only that, from the way the company treated anyone who isn't Charlotte Flair, even if they are an ex-champion, it wouldn't be long for Becky to suffer the fate of the likes of others such as Bayley. ^note Bayley's one year reign as SmackDown Women's Champion was treated as an after thought after losing it and she never has another meaningful moment and was even left out for WrestleMania 37. This is softened slightly as Bayley soon entered into a title program before being injured and missing the rest of 2021 and over half of 2022. Considering that Becky had competed for the 24/7 Championship, her behavior is understandable.

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