Every WWE Smackdown Women's Title Reign Ranked From Worst To Best

The Smackdown Women's Title has never gotten the credit or spotlight it deserves. Even in the main event of WrestleMania, it has been treated as secondary, as a bonus alongside something greater.

It started off as a beacon of hope during the Women's Evolution, yet half of its WrestleMania appearances have come through last-minute, thrown-together multi-woman bouts. The reigns are often underwhelming: hard-working talented women being undermined by the creative team's apathy. Even now, on 2020 Smackdown, the belt isn't treated with the reverence it should be, with champion Bayley taking non-title losses regularly.

Let's acknowledge these hard-working women, who have devoted themselves fully to establishing the blue belt as a worthy World Championship. Some reigns have succeeded more than others, and yes, there has been a lot of disappointment along the way, but the beautiful parts of this belt's history stand out strongly amongst WWE's greatest modern moments, with each one worth celebrating, hyping up, and talking about forever.

The women who have worked hard to establish Smackdown should always be proud of themselves, even when the bookers didn't care. Them and their efforts have always stood out...

It might seem unfair to rank Carmella’s months-long reign as worse than several shorter reigns. But in terms of match quality and impact on the division, her four months as Smackdown's Women's Champion was a nightmare, one that damaged the aura of one of the best wrestlers in the company and didn’t even make her feel important in her own title loss.

Her successful cash in on Charlotte Flair the Smackdown after WrestleMania felt like a terrible decision at the time, especially since Charlotte had just controversially ended the undefeated streak of Asuka. Worse was Carmella’s subsequent victory over Flair at that month’s notorious Backlash event, cementing Charlotte’s WrestleMania win as a pointless decision. If she had dropped the belt to Asuka at the Money in the Bank or Extreme Rules events, her reign would have been remembered as a mediocre one, but not unforgivably terrible.

While this wasn’t the fault of either woman, the booking of her matches against Asuka made the 'Empress of Tomorrow' look stupid, and amplified the damage that her loss to Charlotte did. It was a lazy way to book a Women's Title feud, gave both her and a returning James Ellsworth huge go-away heat, and ensured that Asuka didn’t recover momentum until her title win at TLC 2018. Her work in ring didn’t start improving until her final match as champion, where she was undermined by the Charlotte/Becky angle. It’s unfortunate that her only reign was such a failure.