Riho was part of the problem though. She looks like she's 90lbs and she's regularly beating people who outweigh and out muscle her by a large margin. It stretched the bounds of credibility and her matches weren't that good either. I don't know if it was her or the talent she was working with.
They wanted to play her up as someone who squeaks out wins and can burst out of nowhere with a roll up or a burst of offense. But that mostly manifested as her getting her ass beat until she got a roll-up against any non-joshi wrestler. The smark in me assumes it was related to Riho's other obligations and not wanting to take too many bumps.
Starting really with Statlander they played her up as someone with a strong level of offense. And this Nyla match went farther with that with a much stronger balance of "she is like 12. of course she is going to die" coupled with "holy frigging hell, how did she do that?" levels of offense. She still bursts out of nowhere in an almost opportunistic manner, but now it is suplexes and brutal looking dropkicks.
I feel it is the match they needed to have for RIho to begin with rather than wait until she likely becomes even more of a part timer.
In terms of her matches: I enjoyed every single Riho match and think it was the kind of "different" that AEW needed to show western audiences. But I felt as a champion she was weak.
