5 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Clash Of Champions 2020

3. A Surprise For The Sake Of A Surprise

Bayley Asuka
WWE.com

With Nikki Cross was sidelined for the PPV (hope she recovers soon), Bayley issued the often ill-fated open challenge Sunday night. And who answered it? No, not a SmackDown superstar.

Asuka, who already had defended her Raw Women’s Championship earlier in the night, came out to answer the challenge. Now, on paper, this could have worked by playing up the SummerSlam match (it was referenced, but just in passing) and how Bayley snuck out a victory thanks to Sasha Banks – and how things could go differently without The Boss in her corner.

Instead, we got lip service to a match, with Bayley causing a DQ after less than four minutes with a steel chair, before Banks interjected herself with a chair.

Seriously, why bother with Asuka if you were going to do a 3-minute DQ? Just have Dana Brooke, Tamina or Naomi get the title shot and then the DQ finish could be followed up on SmackDown later this week. Instead, the Raw Women’s Champion gets pasted with a chair and disappears after a worthless cameo.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.