After watching a EC where they spent an entire match boring the crowd trying to get Shayna I have to ask - why?? Which idiot thought this was the best way to book this.
Just look at all the stupidity that has ensued from having Charlotte win the Rumble:
-you start a Becky program with Shayna before the EV and now we know she has to win. You spend an entire PPV main event boring people to have her kill people to lake her seem strong since she was tossed out of the Rumble
-you start a Charlotte vs Rhea feud basically making Bianca vs Rhea an afterthought and now have to kill so much time before the match
Instead all you had to was:
-have Shayna be a monster during the Rumble and toss out Charlotte like she means shit and win. Now she has some time to pick her opponent. She teases another match with Rhea an goes to NXT. She chokes out Bayley. Finally she attacks and lays out Becky and says she is to finish what Ronda couldn’t. bam. Now you have a short build up to this that’s violent
-you have an incredible EC match with many women who could win and Charlotte wins. You have her the next day confront Bayley and it looks like she will face her but then she instead out comes Rhea with a challenge. Then you have her come on the NXT show
For the life of I don’t get why you would do it the first way and basically force premature builds of your title programs either before you have declared them an opponent or before a key title match is done, and then sacrifice a main event PPV just to put someone over?
It is so easily done the second way and basically eliminates everyone one of these negative points
Are they really that stupid or am I missing something?
I would go a different way to get to similar results. We’re I booking the women’s division in WWE I would have had Shayna be more brutal in the Survivor Series match and have her injure Becky forcing Becky to vacate the belt. Then have a match set between Charlotte and Asuka for the vacant title. Have Shayna attack Charlotte and enter the match, win the title. Face Charlotte at the rumble And win. Then have Sasha win the Rumble and get set to face Bayley. Have Bayley attack her when she is going to announce her opponent trying to betray Sasha before Sasha betrays her. Then at EC have a match to choose the challenger for Shayna match set to be Asuka, Natalya, Charlotte, Ruby (maybe Kairi, or a call up of some kind) and then have Becky enter as a surprise, and go on to win. Setting up a showdown with Shayna at Mania. Then have Charlotte challenge Rhea because she still wants a Mania match.
They can’t help themselves. They have to make it more convoluted and confusing. That was the problem last year, too. You didn’t need Charlotte in the match, but then they had to explain why she was in the match after they went in that direction.
They are incapable of going from point A to point B. They have detours, backtracks, side quests, and swerves. And then, after all that, there’s no payoff. They’ll switch the ending to be “unpredictable”, but instead they’ve just contradicted months of stories and angles.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this all started basically because WWE got mad that the results of the Royal Rumble “leaked”? As if that’s a new thing in pro wrestling.
The whole thing needs to be more simple. Shayna wins the Rumble and challenges Becky, build from there. Charlotte wins the EC and challenges whoever the SD champ is.
There is no need for the NXT womens match to be on Mania. The last thing the company needs is more meaningless title matches. Having the NXT title on Mania also devalues the SD womens title, which seems to have zero plan for the biggest show of the year.
I think the problem is they want Charlotte on Mania but we’ve already seen Charlotte va Bayley multiple times. So unless they took the belt off Bayley that isn’t an exciting match either
I agree with your post, it’s definitely been odd seeing the women’s division struggling after it seemed to soar previous years.
My biggest feeling is they’re not raising the whole roster to a new level, Liv Morgan and Mandy Rose get attention because they look a certain way, not so sure it’s skill based. I’d love to see some real effort put behind the ones with real talent. Ruby Riot seems to strike me as someone who could deliver a great match if given the opportunity.
Maybe it could also be workplace culture and how they’re still viewed too. Cole referred to Mandy as Otis’s woman. Which I felt was stupid because uhm no, they aren’t anything and second, she can date anyone I’m assuming. So I felt the story was told really well, but then Cole’s interpretation of the storyline was very old fashioned. Just an observation. I’m also studying HR and organizational behaviour so I’m probably picking too deep lol
They are still suffering from burning out the whole division in the build to last years mania. Similar to what they did with Shayna last night they tend to really sacrifice the division to build their title matches on the main roster to the point that no one feels special other than maybe 2 people. Then when that feud ends only one person feels special.
This is what happens when you have the combination of too much television time (NXT included), too few legitimate contenders and not enough foresight. How can Shayna or whoever else be built up slowly if:
a.) they’ve already been a pushed wrestler (possibly even a main eventer) on NXT for a year or more
b.) it only takes a few months to run through most of the roster
c.) there are so many belts to feature that anybody who wins a non-title program immediately feels like a #1 contender
d.) all the while, the champion still needs a program
e.) and things change at the drop of a hat anyway
Not really, it is because they don’t make contenders have competitive matches with others on the roster. Like it is great that Shayna looks like a monster, but should she win the belt who am I to believe will challenge her after she beat everyone but Charlotte and Kairi in about 2 mins back to back to …
Ideally you only need one main roster women’s title and don’t need a women’s tag title at this point.
The women wrestling for the title should only be on one show too. Managers and valets can be on either show.
They screwed up this current crop of women when Banks and Charlotte traded the belt back and forth a billion times. The title became meaningless after that.
The Asuka call up was completely botched and now there are too many inexperienced people on the main roster (Evans, Brooke, Logan, Morgan, etc.)
The women are just there to fill time and occasionally get pushed up to the title for a big show. They randomly rotate a new challenger in and never tell a story or have anything planned long term
My ideal championship picture for wwe is women on one show, tag teams on the other. A raw men’s title, and Smackdown men’s title, then a world title that is defended against either brand on PPV events. Then maybe have women’s tag titles depending on the number of women on the main roster.
The problem with what you’ve suggested is that, if Baszler has already won the rumble and announced that she’s challenging Becky, how does Charlotte end up in the SD chamber match? And how does she go from winning the SD chamber match to challenging the NXT champ?
I agree that it wasn’t ideal, but the version you present here has just as many holes as what WWE went with.
I mean she could pull an Edge to get in the chamber, and then challenge Rhea after the story being that she is desperate to be fighting for a title at mania. My biggest issue with that would be it making the NXT title feel like the 3rd choice instead of a desirable one.
It’s not a hole they have done this many times and they never care about sticking to a brand. You could have EC not be Smackdown but an open women’s challenge taking 2 from each of SD/NXT/RAW with the winner facing a champion. You can do this bc Shayna will announce who she picks to choose after the EC so all women are eligible as you don’t know who they will face. Then you swerve JT and have Shayna take out Becky and Charlotte challenge Rhea. Either way it’s more exciting EC, better Portland women’s match, better Rumble ending and less of a dragged out build for this