I, of course, think this is a terrible booking decision. I said it back when Naomi returned from her injury earlier this year. Before she gets a title reign, she needs to prove she can stay healthy. What happened? The WWE gave her the title in a feud in which she had all the momentum. She pinned Alexa Bliss numerous times. She never even lost a brawl. Just had all the momentum. Oh, and she got injured in the very match she won the title. She had to vacate the title. This is exactly what I was talking about. She came back in time for Wrestlemania, once again having the momentum heading into the big PPV, and she just beats Alexa Bliss again.
When I previewed this match, I said I would have had Alexa Bliss retain and build up a singles feud for her to drop the title. It would have been better. If Naomi was the woman they chose for that feud, fine, but she would still need to clean up her style and stay healthy.
Where has the WWE's standards gone? There are times when the WWE would not be too eager to push someone and fans would say the reason is that person is injury-prone. Wade Barrett is an example of that. I can understand that idea. Why give big pushes to people that might get injured? As far as Barrett goes, I was on his side when he won King of the Ring. The WWE gave him the accolade, then pushed him poorly for a while. Fans brought up the injury excuse. Well, if the WWE didn't want to push him because he might get injured, they shouldn't have given him the accolade. They finally gave him something good to do with The League of Nations. And he got injured. Oh well, that is why you should be cautious with people that get injured a lot. But where has that idea gone?
People are so busy being blinded by Roman Reigns, they often overlook that the WWE has gotten a little lax and careless with their standards. They are doing things these days that you would not expect them to do a couple years ago. Things going on in the women's division are an example of that. You also have people debuting from NXT that really only have smark appeal right now and the WWE is treating them like they are people everyone should know. Outside of Reigns, there are a lot of smark favorites being pushed well, like AJ Styles and Kevin Owens.
There is nothing wrong with having standards. The problem is when you have unfair standards, like treating someone like Cesaro like he has closer to a 0% chance than a 50% chance of ever earning a better career for himself, no matter what he does. There is also an issue with inconsistent standards. You can't say you won't push one guy because he gets injured too much, then push someone else that gets injured just as much. It isn't right. And the WWE's standards these days just seem to be a mess. What is it? Are they lowering their standards? Are the standards just becoming inconsistent? One of the reasons for the poor quality of the product is a failure to uphold a proper standard of excellence, or even just a standard of efficiency.
I just think the WWE has sent a terrible message with how they handled Naomi. Even if she does stay healthy during this title reign, that is not the point. How is it to look at a performer that gets injured multiple times in the span of the year just get pushed this hard in the span of a few months, despite an injury killing that push for a while just a few weeks after returning from an injury? What about those other performers that have managed to stay healthier than that and have been available more often than that injury-plagued performer? That can get annoying. In the men's division, it might not be that big of a deal. There is a lot of room to push multiple men properly, whether a title is involved or not. In the women's division, it is much worse. The WWE has tried to push multiple women consistently, and it just looks ugly more often than not. There are women being underutilized and misused that have to watch Naomi essentially run over the women's division twice after returning from injuries in the span of less than 4 months. She has not lost a match or lost a brawl in any night this year. Why? She's not Goldberg. She's not Finn Balor. Why should she be made to look this good? First things first, stay healthy.
Let me do a slight aside. The Smackdown women's match was initially supposed to be on the pre-show at Wrestlemania. Face it, that's where it belonged. I want to see women used properly, but even I have to admit that this poorly-developed, multi-performer match deserved the pre-show. That is not a knock on these women. That is a knock on how the WWE developed this match. Instead, Dean Ambrose vs. Baron Corbin got bumped down.
Now, I do not usually find it as a big deal if a match is on the pre-show or not. Years ago, throwaway matches that didn't get any real attention at all were there. These days, the WWE does a better job putting more important matches there. But a lot of fans still take it seriously, so I will spend time talking about this.
It is terrible that Dean Ambrose got bumped off the main card. This guy was WWE Champion just a few months ago. He is getting a personal singles feud. He is a pretty popular guy. Just terrible. This doesn't put him on the same level as Mojo Rawley, but you should treat this guy with a little more respect that this.
Even though I am all for women being treated better in the WWE, this whole thing was just terrible. Is feminism about women being treated as equals to men? Or is it about women being treated better than men? I think it is the former. Fans need to realize that the WWE does this to the men. They push certain feuds and certain men better than others. And those ones on the bottom are the ones that constantly get on the pre-show or don't get on the card at all. Ideally, you got to achieve to earn better for yourself. The WWE has to do the work to help you get over with the fans and get your feud over with the fans.
This Smackdown's women's feud did not deserve to take Ambrose/Corbin's spot on the card. No woman in either division is really knocking it out of the park in terms of being the most over performer. Even then, Raw's women's division is the one that has been developed better than Smackdown's. Raw's women's match got better development. Some women actually had to win matches to earn their way into the Wrestlemania match. That is already better than Smackdown's women's match.
If you are just going to say Smackdown's women's division automatically deserves to be featured at the same level as Raw's women's division, you are just giving the WWE the green light to be lazy. They have not put in the proper work into these women. Instead of treating them better and building those better feuds and matches for them that are worthy of being on the same level as Raw's PPV matches, they are just going to stick these messes out there. I have pointed out how inferior Smackdown's women's matches have been treated at the big PPVs since the brand split in comparison to Raw's women's matches. You can overlook Smackdown losing to Raw at Survivor Series, but everything else at Summerslam, the Royal Rumble, and Wrestlemania has been thrown-together multi-woman matches. The fact that the Wrestlemania match was bumped to the main card does not change anything.
Everyone talks about giving the women a chance. What most of those people meant was just treat them better. The WWE has done an inconsistent, poor job at that at times. But if just giving them more match time and booking them on the main card is enough to sucker some of these fans into being content, the WWE will never improve like they need to. These women will never reach their proper potential in this environment and the overall product will not improve.
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