Jacy Jayne is not going to argue with anybody calling Fatal Influence the female Shield.
The comparison has been made since the group arrived on SmackDown, and it hardened last Friday when Jayne beat Tiffany Stratton for the Women’s United States Championship. That win means all three of them hold gold, with Fallon Henley and Lainey Reid holding the Women’s Tag Team Championship.
Asked about it on Not Sam Wrestling, Jayne took the compliment.
“Yeah, you know people are calling us the female Shield. I’ll take that.”
She then set out what the plan had been from the start.
“We honestly came in with a plan. We’re like, we’re coming. We’re gonna make an impact. We’re taking over. It’s the next generation. Sorry to the other girls in the locker room, but if you can’t outdo us, then we’re not gonna have any gold.”
“We’re gonna be on top, and we plan to be on top for a very long time. So get used to it.”
Asked what makes the three of them work, she pointed to how long two of them have known each other and to the competitiveness between all three.
“Me and Fallon have known each other for like 10 years, so I think that chemistry has just been built up over time. And Lainey came in, and she’s a beast. She had a point to prove, and she’s definitely stepped up to the plate.”
“I think the thing that keeps us so strong is we’re all supportive of each other, but at the same time we’re all very competitive. We want to outdo everybody else. But I think in a weird way we’re also trying to one up the other. So it just makes all of us stay on top of our game at all times, and it’s working. Clearly it’s working.”
The title match existed because of a deal made the week before. Jayne interrupted Chelsea Green’s celebration of her Interim WWE Women’s Championship win on the August 7 SmackDown in Philadelphia and made it clear she wanted the Women’s United States Championship. Stratton offered it on the condition that she and Green got an immediate shot at Henley and Reid’s tag titles. Fatal Influence accepted, Henley and Reid retained, and Nia Jax and Lash Legend attacked afterwards.
That attack is what set up the finish. Stratton went into Friday’s match with storyline rib damage after stepping in front of the two of them to protect Green, and lost the title by choosing to protect her again. With the moonsault set up, Stratton went to the outside to take out Henley and Reid rather than finish the match, and Jayne caught her with the Rolling Encore on the way back in. Green, limited at ringside by the broken orbital bone she suffered on that same August 7 show, could do little about any of it.
Stratton had held the title for 112 days, having taken it from Giulia on the April 24 SmackDown and ended her second reign at 113 days. She was the youngest champion the title has had.
Jayne is the fifth different holder of a championship introduced in December 2024, and says her aim is to make it matter.
“It feels right again having gold. I’m ready to elevate this title, and hopefully get a lot of girls’ TV time and make some magic.”
“There’s nothing more that I love than having a five star classic match. There’s so many girls on the roster that I haven’t been able to work yet that I think I would have great chemistry with. I thought me and Tiffany had great chemistry. Tiffany is tough as hell, so props to Tiffany.”
The reaction Fatal Influence gets is the part she enjoys most, and she is unusually direct about it.
“There’s nothing I love more than how everybody hates me. They love to hate me, and I thrive on that. There’s nothing I love more than making grown men cry.”
“I feel like in this day and age people are kind of sensitive, so they want to get cheered. Even the bad guys secretly want to get cheered. So you need to be a real bad guy. You got to be booed. You got to shut down the cheers. I thrive off the boos. I don’t want to be cheered. I want you to hate me.”
She was booed loudly enough on the group’s SmackDown debut that she could not deliver her promo, something she credits five years in NXT with preparing her for.
“Even on our debut, going out there, I did not anticipate to get that kind of hate to the point where I could not even get a word in. So if I hadn’t had so much promo time on NXT, I probably would have been freaking out. But I knew how to handle the situation because I’ve been booed out of the building so many times at NXT too.”
