The SmackDown Live Women’s Championship
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This match is no longer scheduled to be on the kickoff show, but rather the main card. That’s great news, as all 6 women in the match have worked very hard to earn a shot at showing what they can do on the biggest stage possible.
But, in the interest of playing devil’s advocate, with a 13-match card you can only showcase so many matches on the main show, so something has to go on the 2-hour pre-show.
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As I stated earlier, the only other match that could have been placed on the kickoff outside of the Battle Royal and the Cruiserweight match would have been Baron Corbin vs. Dean Ambrose for the IC Title, specifically due to the lacklustre build for the match and the lack of buzz leading up to the contest.
After Naomi went down with an injury, WWE was left with a void to fill in the SmackDown LIVE Women’s division. The path was clearly leading toward the Orlando native defending her newly-won Women’s Championship in front of her friends and family in her hometown.
When that became an improbability due to the champion’s injury, WWE was forced to have her relinquish the belt, and they had to start over from scratch in regards to planning their Women’s Championship match for WrestleMania 33.
It proved to be a difficult position because until the final episode of SmackDown before ‘Mania, there was no set stipulation for the match.
Alexa Bliss, the new champion, was scheduled to defend her title in a vague match, taking on all available female wrestlers on the SmackDown roster.
It took a couple of weeks for any names to actually be announced for the match, and it looked like they were probably going to go into the show with surprise entrants that would just show up when the match took place on April 2.
Would it be a gauntlet match? Some kind of elimination match? A battle royal? WWE didn’t give any indication as to what they had planned, likely because until they knew that until Naomi was cleared to return, they didn’t have a plan set in stone.
By the time she was cleared, time was running out and they booked whatever match they could, and it turned out to be the 6-pack challenge.
Because of the wishy-washy booking and utter confusion surrounding the match, it felt fitting that if time constraints were going to be an issue, this would be one of the matches to be placed on the kickoff show.
Is it fair to the women who have busted their asses for the last 8 months trying to make the SD Live Women’s Title into a meaningful belt? No, of course not. The same goes for the Cruiserweight Title, but sometimes things don’t always turn out the way we would have liked.
In the end, though, the WWE Universe scored a victory, as the very vocal social media crowd was very displeased when they found out that the match would not be on the main card, and a hashtag campaign swelled up until WWE changed their minds and decided to feature the match on the main card instead.
I am very glad it got changed, but I would have accepted it based on sound reasoning if it stayed the way it was.
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