The REAL Reason Charlotte Flair Just Won The SmackDown Women’s Title

Sasha Banks Sarah Logan Bayley
WWE.com

Looking beyond SmackDown Live, since WWE has dispensed with the brand split this WrestleMania season, there aren’t many worthy names on RAW, either. Ruby Riott is a very good and overlooked performer, but is stigmatised as just another body—and she leads the Riott Squad faction that is more eager to impress than impressive in itself, definitively ruling out Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan.

WWE’s decision to rush the introduction of the Women’s Tag Team Championship has indirectly influenced all of this, too; wildly uneven in quality, the doubles division has limited the singles field. Asuka Vs. Bayley, or Asuka Vs. Sasha Banks, is an impossibility. Asuka Vs. Nia Jax, meanwhile, is a dodged bullet.

None of this excuses the absence of a SmackDown Women’s Title match—but it does explain it. WrestleMania 35 is a night on which history will be made. WWE wishes to celebrate women’s wrestling, and a middling SmackDown Women’s Title match would expose it.

Which leads us to the additional, primary reason.

Sadly, beyond his influence over the Brock Lesnar character and Ronda Rousey’s divisive but memorable promo game, Paul Heyman is not a part of WWE’s creative process—but WWE, so close to WrestleMania, has borrowed the foundational logic behind his legendary ECW promotion:

Accentuate the positives, hide the negatives.

We complain endlessly of 50/50 booking, from both micro and macro perspectives. The byproduct of this mentality is a roster largely indistinguishable from itself. There are no true, stable tiers anywhere across the main roster; Drew McIntyre was eliminated from the Royal Rumble in January, and is perceived now as a credible threat to Roman Reigns at WrestleMania. Sometimes this works; most often it does not. That is the cumulative effect of a lack of long-term planning.

The decision to end Asuka’s reign, and to seemingly kill off the entire SmackDown Women’s division, felt initially like yet another harebrained short-term booking decision.

In reality, WWE is thinking in the long-term.

CONT'D...(3 of 5)

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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!