As seen during Friday night’s episode of WWE SmackDown, Adam Pearce announced that Otis would join the men’s Team SmackDown and Bayley would be joining the women’s team. With that being said, Natalya had to defeat Tamina Snuka in order to earn her spot on the women’s Team SmackDown.
According to a report from the Wrestling Observer, there simply just wasn’t enough time on SmackDown after their creative plans had been finalized to give Otis and Bayley qualifying matches.
It’s worth noting that Adam Pearce told Braun Strowman earlier this month that he couldn’t automatically be added to Team RAW and had to compete in a qualifying match.