WWE Considered Nia Jax As A “Placeholder” For Ronda Rousey At TLC

Ronda Rousey defeated Nia Jax at the WWE TLC event to retain the RAW Women’s Title. It was match that they had a lot of time to work on. There were a couple of spots where you weren’t really sure which way WWE was headed so that added to the drama. Then Rousey made Jax tap to the armbar.
Dave Meltzer explained WWE’s mindset during Wrestling Observer Radio that they had for WWE TLC as they prepared for a much bigger opponent for Rousey down the line.

“The thing is that the whole idea of this Nia Jax thing was just to basically kill the month before Charlotte at the [Royal] Rumble because they didn’t want to do Charlotte Flair obviously because they wanted to do the [TLC] match with Charlotte Flair instead.”
“So Nia Jax was just kinda there like as a retread. A little bit of steam off the Becky Lynch thing. So, but it was just kinda like a placeholder. Actually, that’s what I was kinda told, ‘This is just a placeholder until Ronda gets to the big matches,’ which is why even in this one there was an underlying of Charlotte Flair because that’s what they consider the big match. This was just a match to get to the big match.”

Nia Jax didn’t have a very good night in San Jose, but she wasn’t supposed to. As a hated heel, she got what was coming to her at WWE TLC. Now WWE can move on to feuds that they consider to be a much bigger priority.
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