The moment of truth for Jade Cargill is upon us.
That sounds dramatic, sure. But we’ve officially hit an inflection point on Jade Cargill’s career trajectory. And while that doesn’t mean her career is over if she doesn’t win on Saturday, it would start a new chapter that looks very different from the one she’s been writing since debuting in WWE.
On the October 24 episode of SmackDown, Cargill finally returned after disappearing for a few weeks. The last time fans saw her, she was bleeding from a pretty deep gash that needed stitches—a rough ending to a Triple Threat main event on the September 26th edition of SmackDown that resulted in her coming up short in winning Tiffany Stratton’s championship for the third time in a row. Her comeback wasn’t subtle: she ran in to save Tiffany Stratton from Giulia and Kiana James, and then dropped Stratton immediately after. A rescue turned betrayal. A heel turn. A long time coming.
Cargill’s villain era has been peaking over the horizon for a few months. It didn’t bubble on the surface like Asuka’s, or what Nikki Bella’s seems to be doing; it was quieter and lonelier. Ever since Naomi revealed herself as Jade’s attacker last year, Jade’s existed in isolation. She’s avoided allies. She dodged reconciliation with Bianca Belair. The whole “Big 3” dynamic has splintered. Now, frustration and resentment—mostly directed at Stratton—have turned her cold.
So what happens next depends on what happens Saturday.
Let’s begin with what if Jade Cargill loses. It’s hard to see a future where she rightfully obtains another match unless she wins the Royal Rumble, or looks like even a threat moving forward. Three months of losses to Stratton would continue to cement Tiffany’s legend, but make Jade look like the star who never quite arrived.
But if she wins, it’s the validation her entire wrestling experience—a journey filled with harsh critiques and bold risks and a hope that her wrestling skill would catch up to her star power.
The truth is that Jade Cargill has taken the road less traveled, especially in this era of exceptional women’s wrestling. She didn’t come from the indies. She didn’t grind it out on the Florida circuit or win over the Performance Center coaches through grit and sacrifice. She’s more like the Trish Stratus archetype: a natural phenomenon who forced wrestling to meet her halfway.
As her lore goes, she had a tryout with WWE in 2019 where she wasn’t hired by WWE. At that time she just seemed like a typical face amongst a slew of other top trained athletes. Then AEW called. She debuted in November 2020, instantly commanding the camera before she even wrestled a match. Her official debut—a tag match featuring Shaquille O’Neal of all people—was chaos, spectacle, and meme fodder.
If you had to summarize her AEW tenure in two words, it would be stunted potential. AEW loves its “wrestler’s wrestlers,” with regular 25-minute bangers up and down their pay-per-view cards and television. Cargill was different from anything they’ve come across though. She looked like a comic book character, but wrestled like someone still learning what a “spot” was in a company that isn’t in the business of building a star from the ground up. It’s noted that CM Punk had to teach her how to swing a steel chair once, just hours before she pulled it off.
To everyone who had eyes, Jade Cargill was a star.
Despite that, the star shone through, and she became the company’s first ever TBS Champion (and the longest-reigning champion in the belt’s lineage until Mercedes Moné recently eclipsed it). Unfortunately, her inexperience and the lack of consistency in Jade’s matches stunted her in-ring development, and the matches rarely kept up with the mystique. Still though, Jade mattered. She was a walking “What if?” that AEW couldn’t quite solve.
Then came WWE.
She arrived to more hype than just about any signing since Cody Rhodes made his jump from AEW. She immediately reported to the Performance Center to work on refining the basics, and her first glimpse of greatness in front of an audience happened nearly three months later at the 2024 Royal Rumble. Fans were gifted with a dream encounter between her and Bianca Belair—a moment the internet had been fantasy booking since her AEW debut. Two months later, she’d make her proper in-ring WWE debut at WrestleMania XL, teaming up with Bianca Belair and Naomi to face Dakotai Kai, Asuka and Kairi Sane. From that moment, things began rolling for her with competition against the likes of Asuka, Nia Jax, Tiffany Stratton, Naomi, and Roxanne Perez ever since.
Two years later, she’s better—not perfect, but better. The presentation still outpaces the polish, but that’s the Jade Cargill experience: she’s the future in concept, even when the execution wobbles. Now she has the opportunity to become a World Champion, something that seemed like a forgone conclusion due to the nature of her star, but it was quite the road to get here. A win on Saturday would prove that WWE’s investment in her—the long training stretch, the slow burn, the media machine—actually paid off. A loss would say the experiment is still ongoing, maybe indefinitely.
Some people think she isn’t ready. They’re probably right, technically. But if WWE waits until she’s “ready,” the stars may fall out of alignment. Jade Cargill’s story has always been about arriving at the perfect time, and without a doubt the clock’s finally on her side.