The Raw and SmackDown Women’s Championship Scenes
Back at Survivor Series 2018, Ronda Rousey as Raw women’s champion was supposed to face SmackDown women’s champion Becky Lynch in the traditional brand warfare match. However, Nia Jax inadvertently broke Becky’s nose, resulting in her getting pulled from the fight.
Charlotte Flair stepped in as the alternate and fought Rousey to a no-contest, since WWE didn’t want either to lose. After all, this was very clearly their intended match for WrestleMania. While WWE wanted Becky to be a heel that Charlotte would overcome so people could firmly get behind The Queen beating Rousey at Mania, the crowd refused to listen and backed Lynch all the way. This caused WWE to pivot and put the focus on her, but since they wanted Flair in that historic main event, they moved titles around, sacrificed Asuka and finagled a Royal Rumble win to set up a three-way.
Becky won. Rousey left. Fast forward a year and Becky beat Shayna Baszler at WrestleMania 36 while pregnant. She left a few weeks later after Money in the Bank (awarding Asuka the title in the process) to go on pregnancy leave.
Fast forward again through Asuka’s title reign that WWE never once seemed interested in, as they had constantly put the spotlight on everyone else and made The Empress of Tomorrow an afterthought, Asuka drops the belt to Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania 37 (in what was clearly not the plan, as it was likely Flair against Lacey Evans). Ripley isn’t their priority, either, so the belt goes back to Flair once more, as Ripley apparently isn’t allowed to beat Flair, ever.
But hey, at the same time, Bianca Belair had won the 2021 Royal Rumble and dethroned Sasha Banks at WrestleMania 37 for the SmackDown Women’s Championship. She would hold it until SummerSlam, when Becky Lynch returned and beat her in under 30 seconds.
After the 2021 Draft, WWE put Becky (SmackDown champion) on Raw and Charlotte (Raw champion) on SmackDown. To remedy this, they quite literally had them trade titles and call it a day. It went over like a lead balloon, in part because Flair didn’t like how she would come off in the segment, so it was awkward and clunky with her dropping the title instead of Lynch grabbing it and so on.
Since then, Flair did basically nothing. She tossed some pies around with Toni Storm, who left, and beat Naomi a few times.
Meanwhile, Becky had already fought Bianca Belair on more than one occasion. Belair had her chance to win the title back and failed. A few others stepped up, like Liv Morgan and Doudrop, but Belair eventually won the Elimination Chamber to earn another shot. This time, it’s for the Raw Women’s Championship.
That’s in part due to how Ronda Rousey made her return to win the 2022 Royal Rumble. She had the opportunity to challenge either champion, but again, quite literally didn’t pick Becky “because” and just chose Charlotte, essentially “because.”
That means WWE is doing a rematch from SummerSlam that happened a few more times after that with Belair/Lynch and a rematch from Survivor Series 2018 and WrestleMania 35 (or, at least, the match they always wanted to originally have at WrestleMania 35, before Becky screwed things up by getting over with the crowd and saving the women’s division.)
That’s my underwhelmed and biased breakdown of what you need to know if you’ve been skipping out on WWE for quite a while, but want to be caught up prior to WrestleMania 38.
Next time, we’ll take a look at what’s going on with the Intercontinental, United States and 24/7 Championship titles. Stay tuned.
