6 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE Backlash 2016

Downs...

6. Carmella

nikki bella carmella
WWE.com

A very good case could be made that Carmella isn’t quite ready for the main roster and was called up too soon. There certainly was plenty of evidence during the SmackDown Women’s Championship match Sunday.

Carmella was one of the last two women left in the six-pack elimination match, meaning she had a 50/50 shot at becoming a champ, and she spent a solid 30 seconds freaking out that Nikki Bella had slapped her in the face. The best Carmella could muster on offense against Becky Lynch was a series of slaps while screaming about Nikki’s slap. That was it. No punches, no forearms, no slams… maybe there was a kick thrown.

It just looked awful and made Becky’s win seem really anti-climactic, which when you’re talking about crowning a first-ever champion, that’s exactly what you don’t want. But despite Carmella’s out-of-her-league moment, she can’t shoulder all the blame…

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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.