Opinion: Making sense of Charlotte Flair defeating Asuka for the SmackDown Live Women's Championship

Last night on SmackDown Live, instead of the advertised Fatal 4 Way match to determine her challenger for WrestleMania 35, Asuka defended her SmackDown Live Women’s Championship against Charlotte Flair. To the anger of many fans, Charlotte won the title and is now the SmackDown Live Women’s Champion. There are only two ways this move makes any sense.

The first way this move makes sense is if the main event at WrestleMania is to unify the RAW and SmackDown Women’s Championship or a “Winner Takes All” match. As of late, the brand split has lost a lot of its meaning with superstars appearing on the opposite brand. So, unifying the two championships isn’t too farfetched, especially given the fact that Sasha Banks and Bayley and all future WWE Women Tag Team Champions will be defending the titles on both brands and in NXT.

A Winner Takes All match where the winner takes home both belts would be the same thing, but more complicated since the champion would most likely have to be feuding with two people at once and be on both brands. The only issue with this scenario is that if WWE wanted to go down this route, they could have just added Asuka into the match without her dropping the belt. Asuka also has a claim to be in the match since she submitted Becky Lynch at the Royal Rumble and in only won the championship because Ronda Rousey interfered in their match at TLC in December.

The only other way this move makes sense is because WWE wants to add more fuel to the main event at WrestleMania, as well as making Charlotte’s inclusion into the match make more sense. Let’s be honest, the RAW Women’s Championship storyline has lost a lot of steam since the Royal Rumble, and in WWE’s eyes, this is their best way to add more steam to the match heading into WrestleMania.

The other complaint is that Charlotte doesn’t belong in the match and was only added because of Vince McMahon. By having Charlotte win the SmackDown Title, it makes her inclusion make more sense and more meaningful. Again, WWE could have done this without screwing over Asuka in the process, but in their eyes, this was the best way.

At the end of the day, until we see what happens on WWE television next week, there is no way to tell if this move will make sense and if the two titles will be unified or both be on the line in the main event, but for now these seem to be the only two logical explanations as to why Charlotte Flair is now the SmackDown Women’s Champion once again.