{"id":101264,"date":"2021-09-25T12:45:18","date_gmt":"2021-09-25T16:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=101264"},"modified":"2021-09-25T12:45:18","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T16:45:18","slug":"naomi-and-sonya-deville-feud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/09\/25\/naomi-and-sonya-deville-feud\/","title":{"rendered":"A Smart Feud: Naomi and Sonya Deville"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The big ticket program of <em>Friday Night SmackDown<\/em>\u2019s women\u2019s division is unquestionably the feud between <strong>Bianca Belair<\/strong> and <strong>Becky Lynch.<\/strong> Both women have made pro wrestling history, Lynch as an unprecedentedly popular and marketable female performer, Belair as one half of the first pair of \u00a0African-American women to co-headline <strong><em>WrestleMania<\/em><\/strong> in a main event match against each other, alongside <strong>Sasha Banks<\/strong>. For this feat, Belair and Banks won an Espy award, and &#8220;The EST&#8221; was riding high as SmackDown Women&#8217;s Champion until <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/08\/21\/becky-lynch-returns-summerslam-womens-championship\/\" target=\"_self\">losing the title<\/a> in a squash match to Lynch at August 21\u2019s <strong><em>SummerSlam<\/em><\/strong><em>. <\/em>While the two are down for a rematch at this Sunday&#8217;s <em><strong>Extreme Rules<\/strong>, <\/em>the lead-up has been flimsy due to Lynch\u2019s ill-defined heel turn. Becky came back with a chip on her shoulder\u2026 Why, exactly? Her long-winded promos and aggression towards Belair don\u2019t have a believable subtext, a wrong turn in booking for a Superstar whose brand always rested on authenticity, gut instinct, and a connection with the audience that didn\u2019t need to be manufactured or manipulated. This brings us to the budding feud between <strong>Naomi<\/strong> and <strong>Sonya Deville<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Naomi backs WWE Official Sonya Deville into a wall: SmackDown, Sept. 17, 2021\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/r9vehctsf28?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Naomi and Sonya Deville<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>A far more intelligently plotted storyline, however, is that of the growing animosity between Naomi and Sonya Deville. Former SmackDown Women&#8217;s Champion Naomi returned to the blue brand abruptly on August 27; so abruptly, in fact, that authority figure Deville didn\u2019t know she would be there and didn\u2019t have a match scheduled for her. No problem: Naomi was content to wait, initially. However, repeated reminders to put something on the book for her led to Deville\u2019s escalating annoyance and chastisement for insubordination on Naomi\u2019s part that escalated to a \u201cfine\u201d from WWE.<\/p>\n<p>Deville\u2019s treatment of Naomi encapsulates and draws on the very accusations that Naomi\u2019s loyal fanbase has leveled at <strong>World Wrestling Entertainment<\/strong> itself: that they forget about and ill-use her as a performer. In summers 2020 and 2021, respectively, her fans\u2019 chatter trended on Twitter under the hashtag #NaomiDeservesBetter. With the Deville angle, WWE is choosing to play off the controversy with a tongue-in-cheek storyline.<\/p>\n<p>The storyline also speaks to the double-edged sword that many BIPOC female viewers can probably relate to: in a world that compounds the slings and arrows of daily life with the extra burdens of discrimination, African American and other BIPOC women are forced to develop thick skin and self-advocacy skills that are, in turn, stereotypically misconstrued as being too bold or aggressive. As Naomi repeatedly tried to advocate for herself, she was ignored, silenced, and then punished, a cycle of unconsciously biased microaggressions that surely struck an unspoken chord with many viewers who\u2019ve experienced the same, or witnessed their loved ones treated this way.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Naomi calls out Sonya Deville before being kicked out of SmackDown | FRIDAY NIGHT SMACKDOWN\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oUCrdPtX2Ww?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3><strong>A Deeper Look Into This Feud<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The storyline also draws on the tensions between women in power and their subordinates. While female employees may wish they can relate \u2018woman to woman\u2019 with a female administrator, the hard armor of the job they discharge may prevent this, leading to heightened feelings of personal betrayal from the employee who expected understanding. \u00a0Naomi was clearly furious by the time she called Deville out to the ring and challenged her on September 24\u2019s SmackDown.<\/p>\n<p>While Deville struggled initially to keep up with the demands of being a WWE official-being hoodwinked by <strong>Charlotte Flair<\/strong> a few times on <strong>Monday Night Raw<\/strong> during her feud with <strong>Rhea Ripley, <\/strong>for example-but as she insultingly responded to Naomi on the mic, she seemed to be slipping back into a familiar, comfortable skin. It&#8217;s clear that Deville is intrigued by Naomi\u2019s challenge, the animosity between them turning into the familiar, endless waltz between competitors. The chemistry between the two is strong already, which is a good sign.<\/p>\n<p>As <strong>Joe Gacy<\/strong>\u2019s new character on <strong>NXT 2.0<\/strong> exemplifies, WWE is not always sensitive or successful when riffing on society\u2019s hot button issues and social debates. They are no stranger to broad ethnic stereotype characters, with a rogue\u2019s gallery of questionable characters like <strong>Iron Sheik, Kamala,<\/strong> <strong>the Wild Samoans, <\/strong>and <strong>Papa Shango <\/strong>in their past. However, so far the exchanges between Naomi and Sonya Deville have acknowledged their own failings with Naomi\u2019s booking, and the intersectional, unconscious biases that BIPOC women face when trying to reach their goals, but also the struggles women in managerial roles, like Deville, face when trying to communicate with employees. Of course, this is all leading to Deville\u2019s return to the ring. Unlike the program between Belair and Lynch, Deville\u2019s and Naomi\u2019s story is built on relevant nuances that, for many, are a slice of real life.<\/p>\n<h4>More From LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/h4>\n<p><em>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can check out an almost unlimited array of WWE content on the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/watch.wwe.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">WWE Network<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\/watch\/home\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The big ticket program of Friday Night SmackDown\u2019s women\u2019s division is unquestionably the feud between Bianca Belair and Becky Lynch. Both women have made pro wrestling history, Lynch as an unprecedentedly popular and marketable female performer, Belair as one half of the first pair of \u00a0African-American women to co-headline WrestleMania in a main event match [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3715,"featured_media":101271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2192,26,317,4,3,320],"tags":[163,1445,4412,406,159,739],"class_list":["post-101264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wrestling","category-smackdown","category-women","category-wwe","category-wwe-universe","category-wwe-women","tag-becky-lynch","tag-bianca-belair","tag-joe-gacy","tag-naomi","tag-sasha-banks","tag-sonya-deville"],"modified_by":"Robbie Sutter","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3715"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}