This is one of the reasons I do not think Smackdown should have its own Women's Championship. It will get one eventually, but it is not something that is a good idea. What happened last night is obviously not going to be the norm. It would be funny if it just became Eva Marie's gimmick to find ways to back out of matches, but that won't happen. This is the kind of thing that can upset wrestling fans and cause them to go to Twitter and make the WWE look bad, again.
Does the WWE have confidence in some of these women on Smackdown? It seems like there are just too many eye-candy divas on the show. Becky Lynch and Natalya are the only legitimate female wrestlers. If the WWE just exposes some of these other women as inferior, that ruins the competitive feel of the division, if they want to push a division that is going to have a title. How do you avoid making them look inferior? Having Natalya and Becky dumb down? I saw fans dreading that Becky would job to Eva Marie last night.
One of the reasons the diva division died was because of the poor depth that started to become an issue during the brand split. Making two titles just made it worse. The WWE often lacked fresh credible jobbers to push. Injuries just made things worse. Eye-candy divas started to get these pushes and title reigns off these pushes. These women would never get title reigns during the golden age. Only Trish Stratus was getting title reigns during that time, as far as eye-candy goes. Even before Trish was the centerpiece, the WWE would never push an eye-candy diva to a title reign as a credible jobber. Fans don't always buy into these women the same way they would women hired with wrestling training. Moreover, the WWE just started to dumb the division down and lose interest as they used eye-candy credible jobbers more. It finally reached a boiling point at the start of last year.
If the WWE is going to have women like Eva Marie and Alexa Bliss on Smackdown, they have to do something meaningful with them. If they can't push them productively in women's wrestling feuds, they have to find something for them to do in the periphery. If they can't do even that, why have them? Release them.
I would not have made Smackdown get a Women's Championship. Let this be the brand that builds stars in the periphery. Feature the next Torrie Wilson here. Build the new AJ Lee here. Have this women's division be about something other than just respectable women's wrestling. Leave that to Raw. I'm sure some morons might say that is a waste of Beck Lynch. She'll never get a title! Uhh, you do realize she can eventually be traded/drafted to Raw, right? Or maybe whichever woman is holding the title can be sent to Smackdown and that can become the division that is about women's wrestling, while Raw becomes more about the periphery. This doesn't have to be the screwjob of the century for anyone.
Overall, I would have liked Raw and Smackdown to have different philosophies. People always talk about how great NXT is. Okay, let one brand be run with that kind of philosophy. Let the other be run the way the WWE has been doing things. Let one brand cater to wrestling fans. Let the other be more about entertaining the general audience. However you want to break it up, let them develop their own identities. And may the best philosophy win. Or just keep letting both shows run their separate styles. Smackdown should be more than just a two-hour version of Raw with a different roster, which doesn't even matter because trades will change the rosters as time goes by.
Let me do a slight aside about Raw this week. They finally had a mixed-tag match. How can you wait a year to have such a basic match? Take a man. Take a woman. Put them together. Take another man. Take another woman. Put them together. Have the two sides fight. Sasha Banks and Enzo took on Charlotte and Chris Jericho. And that was a good opening segment they had. Better than some self-righteous, feminist speech.
I saw one fan on a message board complaining about it. Why have two men get involved in Charlotte and Sasha's issues? It's like someone has been trapped in a cave for years and is finally let out to see the sun. That is going to hurt his eyes. Men and women have been interacting for years and getting involved in each other's storylines. But there are a few reasons why this kind of thing is good.
First, it gives Charlotte and Sasha a rub from two hot acts. These women may appeal to wrestling fans for their wrestling ability, but this whole revolution isn't for everyone. They need to show some character. And they got a good chance to do that on Raw. I am not saying it is impossible for a woman to get over without rubs from stars in the men's division, but this era can use more of that, and so can some of these women.
Second, it helps to keep the feud going between Charlotte and Sasha without doing stale matches. Sasha has already beaten Dana Brooke a number of times. And that was before the brand split took effect. The depth in the division is now a real issue. Nia Jax is doing her own thing, so it would not be likely she gets tossed into this feud right away. There are not a ton of options to keep this feud fresh. A mixed-tag match like the one they did on Raw was a fresh choice.
Lastly, it was just entertaining. That was the most entertaining segment I have seen with the women in a while. No self-righteous feminism. No bringing up dead family members. No putting NXT on a pedestal. The overall message of the segment was none of that. Pro wrestling is supposed to be about entertaining. I have believed for a while that getting men more involved in the women's matters would help things. The WWE did it right on Raw this week.
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