Rob: The RAW Women’s Championship Situation…Is Complicated

Rob digs into the WWE RAW Women’s Championship situation, and it’s… well it’s kinda complicated!

Five weeks out from WrestleMania we have a tale of two women’s divisions.  On SmackDown the title match is set and it’s just a matter of what hijinks will ensue between Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair on the way there.  On the Raw side, well………it’s complicated.  Champion Asuka has been out for the past couple of weeks after an injury and the opponent she was supposed to face at the Elimination Chamber, Lacey Evans is out for a while for maternity leave.

That’s left the entire division up in the air, and from the looks of things we could be headed to a familiar matchup between Asuka and longtime nemesis but current tag team partner Charlotte Flair.  Which of course is starting to bring up the usual chatter from some sections of the fanbase regarding the Queen.  Some names have been thrown around as alternatives but we don’t have any reason to believe yet that anything but the safe route is going to be taken.  Which begs a few questions.  One, is that the right way to go this year?  And if not, then what is?

If we’re going to stick to kayfabe (which we should seeing as how it’s a TV show with fictional characters and all) then a 12 time singles champion still in her prime should be a favorite to win her way to a title match over the next five weeks, particularly against a field of opponents that have caused her very little trouble in the past.  If you profess to desire logic and continuity in your wrestling storytelling then that should be pretty freaking obvious.

But that’s not really the issue here, is it?

After all I don’t think there is a big constituency for Mandy Rose, Dana Brooke or Peyton Royce (more on her later) to win their way to a title match at WrestleMania.  I don’t think any of you guys or gals want to see Lana in that spot either.  Any of those four ladies would get squashed in five minutes and we’d be wondering why they even booked the match in the first place.  Y’all aren’t mad about Charlotte Flair the character winning her way to a title match so much as y’all don’t want Ashley Fleihr to get chosen over her co-workers to perform in a big spot again.  But here’s the thing – if you’ve been going on saying that Asuka deserves better out of her title reign and that she deserves a WrestleMania worthy of her abilities then if you’re not going to go with Charlotte then there’s one other option on the Raw roster right now:

Naomi.  That’s it.  Shayna Baszler and Nia Jax are likely penciled in for a Tag Team Title defense on the show.  In kayfabe (which again is what we should be relying on here as far as what happens on camera) Naomi is a former two time Smackdown Women’s Champion, former FCW Women’s champion, and WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal Winner.  Last year she pinned the then-Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley, and this year she pinned Asuka in a tag team match.

Outside of kayfabe Trinty Fatu has shown that she can be relied on to perform big in big spots whether it’s in the last two Royal Rumble matches, Money in the Bank matches, or the rare time she’s gotten a singles match on a pay per view.  And if you want to play the you deserve it card she repeatedly been tasked with trying to drag decent matches out of people who clearly aren’t as good or as compelling of performers as her.  If you say no to Charlotte and are looking at the rest of the active Raw roster in the time frame that they have to set up and build to a WrestleMania match then you gotta pick her.

But what about Rhea Ripley?

What about her?  She’s debuting on Raw soon, and she’s poised to do some big things afterwards.  She will inevitably challenge for and defend the Raw title at WrestleMania in the  future.  But if you’re going to sit here and say Charlotte would be leapfrogging over people if she gets the match then what the hell would Ripley be doing?  Do you want her to win the title in that match, too?  Just how would that fit with your wanting Asuka to be “treated better” ?  And unless you’re expecting her to have a forever title reign then how are you going to take it when she loses that title later year, quite possibly to the same woman you don’t want in the match now?

Have you thought all that through, or are you so fixated on not wanting one person to get the match that you’re willing to throw all logic and consistency out the window?  Also, looking at the other side of the street there’s a historic match for the Smackdown Title on deck between Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair; the significance of that match renders the Raw Title match second fiddle regardless so do you really want to spend your big splash for Ripley on a match that’s going to get overshadowed anyway?  Look if you just want Ripley to get the match then say so.  But don’t try to spin it like that’s some kind of justice for those who haven’t gotten as many title matches as Charlotte has, because it just isn’t.

And speaking of which…Peyton Royce

I can’t speak on all this without mentioning the Peyton Royce segment on Raw Talk this week, where she went on about just that.  That segment is coming off the heels of her mother in real life responding to a tweet from WWE about Charlotte setting her sights on the Raw Title by saying that she thinks it’s time for someone else to get a chance (that someone else obviously being her daughter, let’s be real here), so we have a case of art imitating life in wrestling.

And I gotta say, that kind of thing needs to stop.

The Man, or in this case the McMahon (sorry, I had to) is not holding down everyone who isn’t on TV regularly or not getting title shots or whatever.  Sooner or later there needs to be a conversation inside the business that there are levels or tiers or whatever on every company’s roster and that the people who get to stay in the top ones are the people who have proven themselves reliable in those spots.  And to date, she has not.

Over the past year she’s been in the ring with everyone from Bianca to Charlotte to Asuka to Sasha Banks and Bayley to Nikki Cross to her own former partner Billie Kay and you’d be hard pressed to remember anything she did in any of those matches to stand out or at least get recognized alongside her opponent.  Now there are people who work with her that have vouched for her in ring abilities, and I will not debate any of them on that.  But as a viewer I have yet to see one match or  segment of hers that made me want to see more.

And before you blame the writers/bookers for that, look at Lana.  Lana used to be someone I changed the channel or hit the mute button on when she came on TV.  But she took those table bumps for nine weeks and while people were on twitter complaining about it those spots built up sympathy for her as a character and made me want to see how she would get some kind of payback.  And over on Smackdown the Riott Squad gets roughly the same amount of time as Peyton and yet manages to do something with it to make you want more of them.

I’ll leave you with this.  If the main reason you think someone should get a bigger push is because they haven’t gotten one yet, or haven’t gotten one in a while, then that’s not gonna cut it.  At the end of the day they have to give you a reason to support them that is based on who they are, and not on who they aren’t or what they haven’t gotten or because the internet says they’re really good.  If they’ve been on TV, worked with everyone who matters, even held a title and you still can’t remember anything they did then that speaks for itself.

The men and women who have gotten pushed to the top usually don’t need more than their entrance and a minute or two of match highlights to show why they’re where they are and the ones who actually should get moved up can do the same.  And cutting the same ‘the boss isn’t giving me a proper opportunity’ promo isn’t enough either whether it’s on Raw Talk, Dynamite, or any other company’s show.  God knows that it is used entirely too much in every corner of the business now.  It worked for Daniel Bryan and Becky Lynch because when time came to show us who they were, they delivered because they were already that good at performing.  But it just doesn’t work for everyone, because everyone isn’t that good a performer to get that over.  If you can’t do what they did then don’t expect the same results.  Simply not being pushed as far as others isn’t enough.

At the end of the day the question isn’t “should you be pushed more?”, it’s “why should you be pushed more?”  What’s the answer?  If all you got is “time for someone else besides ___?” then you’ve got nothing.