Professional wrestling has historically seen its necessitous share of roster rotation.  It is the nature of the business that wrestlers’ popularity comes and goes in cycles, talents eventually age out of their abilities to consistently perform at high levels, and the organizations that had their finger on the pulse of probable rising stars were smart enough to position those guys to replace the main event gaps along the way.

2015 was an extraordinarily pivotal point for WWE with regards to their perception of women’s wrestling.  During this year, the company began to reevaluate their approach to the featuring of their female talent and capitalized on the increasing popularity of four particular women that became the center of attention, not just in NXT, but professional wrestling period: Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Becky Lynch, and Bayley.  A periodic trend of #GiveDivasAChance blew up on social media, Charlotte, Sasha, and Becky ultimately found themselves competing on the main roster by mid-year (later with Bayley included in the mix by 2016), and by the conclusion of WrestleMania 32 the following year, the often-scrutinized butterfly Diva’s Championship was retired in replacement of an accredited Women’s Championship.  WWE began to phase out many of the old-order tropes associated with the female talent and implemented an “equal playing field” for the women’s division.  And the individuals at the core of this new vision for women’s wrestling in WWE were, what many fans still refer to as the Horsewomen of WWE: Charlotte, Sasha, Becky, and Bayley.

Since 2015/2016, they have been WWE’s Fortune Four of the women’s division; they have been the reliable go-to talents that the company has dependably fallen back on to carry and market the key storylines.  Contextually speaking, they have been the female equivalent to the post-Lesnar Ruthless Aggression Era male Fortune Four (John Cena, Randy Orton, Batista, and Triple H.).  And there lies the problem.  When you factor in the period of time Cena, Orton, Batista, and Triple H. were “on top” in WWE in some form of rotational position, you are essentially looking at somewhere between a seven to ten year period, discretely– Batista, arguably having the shortest time on top from about 2005-2010 full time.  Cena, Orton, and Hunter were positioned at the top of the card in some capacity from about 2005-2012, and in much of that time feuded among themselves over the top title, while WWE saddled the rest of the roster in mid-card obscurity.  It was an absolutely disastrous post-RA period for WWE, and they are still feeling the effects from it years later with the talent that passed through the system at that point that never reached their full potential after being shackled from breaking the glass ceiling of the Cenas, Ortons, and Hunters of the world.  Even during succinct time spans where they briefly elevated guys like Jeff Hardy or CM Punk to the title picture, everything would always circle back to revolving around the Fortune Four in some way, shape, or form.  It took them until 2012 to even begin any form of rectifying those previous business decisions with the rise of The Shield as the “probable next generation guys.”

The comparison of the Fortune Four of the women’s division with the men’s Fortune Four is to demonstrate the point that WWE is approaching early stages of over-saturation with Charlotte, Becky, Sasha, and Bayley in the year 2021.  Just this past April, WWE began to allude to the idea of elevating a new generation of female main roster talent with the pushes of Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair.  Rhea and Bianca won the SmackDown and Raw Women’s Championships at WrestleMania, respectively, by cementing two clean victories over a previous era of women’s talent; they even dedicated a moment in the final segment of the April 13th edition of NXT to have Rhea and Bianca return to the show with their newly won championships to celebrate with, then, NXT Women’s Champion, Raquel Gonzalez as an homage/homecoming.

At the time, if you had proposed the idea that by the fall of this year, the Raw and SmackDown Women’s Championships would be back around the waists of Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair, it would have sounded unreasonable.  Low and behold, as of the writing of this article on November 2, Becky and Charlotte are, once again, the top champions of their respective brands.  And while Bayley is out of action with an injury at the moment, Sasha Banks is still included in the title picture on SmackDown.  As for Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair?  Well, Rhea is currently oscillating and toying around the mid-card on Raw, all the while Bianca just did another job to Becky Lynch on Raw this past Monday as they look to build up the eventual Title vs. Title Match between Becky and Charlotte for Survivor Series.  While the decision to revert back to the Fortune Four seems baseless, it does raise a lot of concerns as to how WWE views their future generation of women talent.  The company clearly does not have much of a faithful establishment with women like Rhea Ripley, Bianca Belair, Shayna Baszler, Mia Yim, Toni Storm, etc. as they do with Charlotte, Sasha, Becky, and Bayley.

As the year 2022 approaches, WWE needs to strongly weigh their options when it comes to whom they feature at the top of their women’s division.  Discounting personal biases and preferences, Charlotte, Sasha, Becky, and Bayley absolutely serve a purpose in the company, but they can not be the focal point of the women’s division forever.  At some point, WWE will soon have to understand the same reality that they eventually realized with Cena, Orton, Batista, and Triple H.– that fact being that they will soon phase out of the top scene and will need suitable replacements to fulfill those roles.  And the more WWE withdraws from going with hot commodities like Rhea, Bianca, Shayna, Mia, Toni, etc., the lesser fans will care about them in the future as they cease to matter on the main roster.