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

Natalya’s sole reign as Smackdown’s women’s champion is difficult to place because it’s one of the most inconsistent title runs in recent memory. It started off relatively well if controversially, with a decent match with Naomi at SummerSlam ending with Nattie’s clean submission victory, which sparked a lot of debate at the time from those who thought Naomi deserved a longer reign.

Her run with the belt ended brilliantly, with her Smackdown match against Charlotte Flair being the best match she’d had in years, coming across as the champion and technical wrestler she’d worked hard to be. It was a beautiful passing of the torch, strengthened by the emotional moment with Charlotte and her father in the post-match.

Unfortunately, the stuff in between varied in consistency, with her issues on the mic being extremely prevalent and a series of mediocre matches dominating a large amount of her three month reign. Random DQ finishes undermining PPV matches with narratives, middling contests on TV and a general lack of effort given from the creative team who seemed more focused on Kevin Owens/Shane McMahon at the time than their women. Regardless of some inconsistencies, it was good to see an overdue veteran get a proper reign in the post Divas era of WWE programming, and she put over the next champion about as well as anyone could.