4 Ups & 7 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 41 - Night 1 (Results & Review)

2. ‘Bowling Shoe Ugly’

Heading into Saturday, the intrigue surrounding the WWE Women’s Championship match centered on whether Charlotte Flair and Tiffany Stratton could cooperate, or if they’d simply batter and shoot on each other.

The answer was a bit of both, and it wasn’t to the benefit of the match. Flair and Stratton started out clobbering each other, a flurry of fists and blond hair, but eventually they settled into a more traditional match… and that’s when it fell off the rails.

The two could not get on the same page to save their lives, whether it was a case of incompatibility or unwillingness to work together. There were numerous times where the match broke down or ground to a near-halt, and at one point threatened to completely fall apart. It was not pretty, nor did it look like a shoot-style fight. They simply were not in sync.

Stratton, in particular, looked out of sorts multiple times, moving slowly like she was wrestling underwater or just unsure of herself. Not exactly the WrestleMania debut that the Women’s Champion would want on her resumé. (To be fair, Tiffany ended the match with a welt on her forehead and what looked like a chipped tooth, so it’s possible she was knocked loopy.)

The match would have benefited greatly had they just gone with a five-to-ten-minute sprint of nothing but the two women battering each other and eschewing all the fancy moves, which is where the match suffered. It would have fit the story perfectly, been truly unique for a women’s match, and might have actually excelled.

Instead, this was just a bad match.