WWE Villainess Blown Opportunity(?): Two Chances to Turn Dana Brooke Heel

It's not just Lifetime and Tubi who miss out on creating some good villainesses. Wrestling has made some missteps as well. There are some that I get over easily, and some others that just anger me. This, TBH, is part of the former; I'm not upset that we didn't get this, but it still would have been amazing. I remember when WWE randomly paired Dana Brooke and Mandy Rose together, and yes, it was random. It was during the Thunderdome period, and Mandy was coming off the end of her partnership with Sonya Deville, which ended with the revelation that the evil Sonya attempted to sabotage Mandy's budding relationship with Otis, resulting in Mandy's face turn.

WWE does the random pairing thing a lot, especially with the women, though it did look like the Dana/Mandy pairing would lead to something. They came up short when it came to the tag titles, but the pairing was still amazing to see. However, after a while, I found myself hoping for a heel turn, and I recall one moment where it looked like they would both become heels together. My vision saw a villainous end to this partnership, and without any doubt, the villainess I wanted to emerge was Dana.

The main reason why I love this pic of both women flexing is because of the expressions (though a second reason is the muscle). As the pic shows, Mandy (right in black) kinda has a light-hearted half smile, while Dana (left in red) shows off a bit of a bad-ass attitude. I always imagine that while Mandy's basically enjoying the photo op, Dana is secretly plotting her heel turn against Mandy, which--in my version--would have come about a few weeks later in the form of a vicious attack. An idea that I just cooked up would have seen Dana portrayed as being attacked backstage, and afterwards, a masked villainess attacks Mandy. The pair band together to find out who had been targeting them, only for video footage to appear and reveal Dana as the masked villainess. Afterwards, the evil Dana attacks Mandy, and later revealed that her jealousy of Mandy motivated her heel turn.

Dana being the villainess against Mandy would have made a lot of sense. Mandy was only a few months into her face run, and it would have made no sense for her to be evil again. Plus, I had wanted a heel Dana for a while; she had already proven that she could be a killer wrestling villainess, and I wanted to see that side to her again.

In a crazy twist of fate, Mandy turned heel after returning to NXT (and the time for that was right), while Dana would spend the end of her long WWE tenure back in NXT mentoring Kelani Jordan. Dana began turning heel herself on NXT, and I remember this very well. She was still mentoring Kelani, but she was trying to coerce Kelani to become more vicious, and we saw it when Dana face Blair Davenport. Kelani prevented Dana from actually using the ring bell as a possible weapon. Dana was defeated, and as the capture shows, she gave quite an evil expression to Kelani afterwards. Dana's abrupt release from WWE came in September of last year, and I still say that it came right before Dana could fully complete her heel turn against Kelani.

Regarding the two opportunities, as much as Dana turning on Mandy would have been amazing, I was actually more amped for Dana's slow heel turn in NXT. The reason is simple: Dana going from a genial mentor to an up-and comer, to an evil veteran looking to take down her young student--that would have been delicious! Dana is now in TNA as a villainess, spending the last year portraying the evil "Ash By Elegance" gimmick that is quickly getting over. It's why I'm not upset over not getting the Dana heel turn against Mandy, as well as not seeing Dana's villainous betrayal against Kelani, because it still ended up working out in the end--for everyone involved.