10 PPV Quality Matches WWE Gave Away For Free On Weekly TV In 2021

6. Sasha Banks Vs. Becky Lynch - SmackDown October 15

Daniel Bryan Roman Reigns WWE SmackDown 30 April 2021
WWE.com

Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch are longtime rivals. The two have had 11 televised singles matches since coming up to the main roster in 2015 (Team PCB! Team BAD!), trading victories and making history along the way. For the rest of eternity, Banks and Lynch (along with Charlotte Flair and Bayley) will be remembered as women who changed the game.

With that in mind, it isn’t a problem that WWE threw away another Banks vs. Becky match on free TV. That’s what the company does, right? Pretty par for the course. No, no problems there. The problems lie in the outcome of the match, and the short-sightedness of it all.

Sasha Banks pinned Becky Lynch after hitting a backstabber.

Lynch had returned to WWE TV a couple of months earlier as the biggest star in the company, yet her first defeat since coming back was given away on an October episode of SmackDown. Not only that, she was pinned after being hit with what is essentially a non-finisher. Nobody remembers it, but it may have been the most underwhelming finish of the year.

Becky Lynch and Brock Lesnar are very different performers, but put Brock in Becky’s position here. The Beast Incarnate is away for a while, returns triumphantly at SummerSlam to win a World Title. Would WWE give away Brock’s first defeat in a non-title match on SmackDown? Of course not. It would be built to as a genuinely big deal, and the treatment of Becky here shines a light on WWE’s continued failings when it comes to not only its women but also its modern-day superstars.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.