The WWE Women’s Division Woes

Do they even care anymore?

Summerslam is days away, and a lot of the sentiment online is of being underwhelmed.  It’s not just the opening ticket prices or traveling to Minneapolis, it’s the quality of the material on WWE programming as well.  But while the company may have a cold, the women’s division has creative pneumonia right now. There are three women’s matches announced and two of them embody all that is wrong with how the division is being booked this year.  The WWE Women’s World Title has been defended twice all year, zero times since WrestleMania.  When then new champion Liv Morgan’s primary challenger, Stephanie Vaquer who she dethroned, took off to recover from injuries, there was no backup plan as far as giving Liv any opponents.  While Bayley and Lyra Valkyria were right there and doing nothing until July, and could have stepped in as one off challengers (it could have even added to their story together!), the creative people decided to have Liv do nothing in May and then enter the Queen of the Ring tournament in June.  Liv’s motive for getting in the tournament was to win and challenge for Rhea Ripley’s WWE Women’s Title so she could win and hold both belts.  OK, a defending champ getting in the Royal Rumble has been done before but the story behind it was that they’d beaten who was in front of them already and needed a new challenge.  Liv literally just won the title and had zero challengers to date; this just didn’t pass the logic test at all.

Now speaking of the other women’s title, it doesn’t get any better.  Ripley hasn’t wrestled in two months and revealed that she has a torn meniscus and is unsure of when she’ll be back.  Normally that kind of thing means you strip the champion of the title and crown a new one.  But in this case they decided to crown an ‘interim’ champion, who will fill in until Ripley can return.  I get that HHH didn’t want to strip Rhea of the title again after having her relinquish it previously in 2024 but designating a substitute teacher champion is worse.  Everyone knows that they are just keeping the seat warm and very possibly will just lose to Rhea when she gets back.  Having her bitter rival Jade Cargill or her ally for the moment Charlotte Flair, who are currently feuding with each other win the title outright to fill the vacancy is a no brainer, but instead we get a ladder match that has absorbed their feud and kept US champion Tiffany Stratton from defending her title (in her home state nonetheless!) on the show as well.  Jade and Charlotte should be having a singles match, be it for the vacant title or just a grudge match, while Stratton defends the US title.  Instead we get neither, and putting Stratton in the match has essentially put any potential challengers of hers on ice for the time being.  Blake Monroe, rumored to be her Summerslam challenger, has been relegated to not even wrestling on Smackdown because now she has no match to warm up for, and other potential suitors like Nia Jax, Candace LeRae, Kiana James, former champ Giulia, and Jordynne Grace have all been moved aside for now while Tiffany preps for the ladder match.

None of this makes sense and it reeks of laziness on the part of the bookers.  Roman Reigns, he of the often maligned part time schedule, has had more title defenses since WrestleMania than Morgan and Ripley combined.  The Universal Title on Smackdown was defended almost as many times from May 29 through July 7 (4) than both women’s titles have been defended all year (5).  And dating back to Jade winning back in the first week of November last year the Smackdown Women’s Title has been defended a grand total of 3 times over the last 9 months in televised matches.  By contrast the now former AEW Women’s World Champion Thekla had seven televised defenses over five months as champion this year, including two TV main events; during that time the two top WWE Women’s titles were defended a combined three times.

This leads me to believe that once they decide who’s going to win the top titles and where, they stop trying creatively.  The week to week build for any women’s PLE matches is usually the most basic kind of stuff – attacking someone before or after a match, interfering in a match, etc. with very little escalation and none of the exposition or character development that we’re seeing in the top men’s feuds.  Instead we usually get forced matchups between women with no history like Jade and Rhea this year or Tiffany and Charlotte last year, or minimal interactions leading up to the matches, or they find a way to take the steam out of a big match like Asuka and Iyo at Backlash and the women’s tag team title match at Mania this year.  Chad Gable’s return after losing his mask in AAA has gotten more detail than any of the women’s titles this year for crying out loud. And when they do finally tack on to something with some more heft like Asuka and Iyo and Kairi Sane they completely nerf it by delaying the big match and then releasing one of the principal characters (Sane) along the way.

Well, either they don’t care or they’re doing it on purpose.  The women’s card placement has gradually declined over the last three years, both on TV and PLEs.  While the lack of PLE main events goes back to when Vince was still in charge, there aren’t very many TV main events now either.  So far there have a grand total of 2 TV main events this year for women between RAW and Smackdown; by comparison AEW Collision has like 10 already this year. Title matches of all kinds, or historic matchups like the Bellas vs Charlotte and Alexa Bliss get shoved in the middle of shows with little build.

The women on RAW and Smackdown are not lacking for history with each other to build off of, or motivations that are easy to turn into a story – Jade and Charlotte were talking to each other about fighting while Jade was still in AEW for crying out loud. None of that was spoken of, and instead we got a year of staredowns between them in the aisle when one was heading to the ring and the other was leaving. If they can find a way to cool off something the women are doing they will do it every time and as a result nothing gets enough buzz to even be considered for main eventing a PLE.

Just think, we may never actually get Jade vs Charlotte one on one. HHH will find ways and reasons to drag it out and delay it like he did with Asuka and Iyo, or tease it and then change it like he did with Rhea and Bianca last year. Or actually have them talk about it on TV, get right to the precipice of doing it and then just shove it aside and flush it down the memory hole.

How many big matches have to be delayed or postponed or scrapped because it’s more important to check a box or position things on a calendar? Rhea and Bianca have been on the main roster together since 2021, and for the four years that it was available never met in the ring one on one. Charlotte and Bianca haven’t met one on one since 2021 and were moving towards each in other in 2023 but instead we got a Damage Control feud rehash with them as partners. Becky Lynch has been going on side quests for most of the last three years – feuding with Trish Stratus, going to NXT, holding the IC title and feuding with AJ Lee – only breaking out of that to do a one off job to Rhea. A loaded women’s tag team division at the beginning of this year was effectively de-pushed and dismantled at a time when it could have main evented a PLE if they gave it proper attention. Instead the focus is solely on which 2 or 3 women other than Rhea who will get a turn with one of the big belts, right up until they get them and then no further. And if anything else manages to get any traction it will be pushed aside as soon as another Big 4 PLE needs to be planned for.

It feels insane to even imagine that a women’s wrestling division was booked better under Vince McMahon, but here we are. Big matches delayed and denied. Stories dragged out with big plot points just dropped (remember Roxanne making moves on Dominik Mysterio?). Match builds and angles that turn main event worthy matchups into midcard filler. Champs who barely wrestle, let alone defend their titles, after winning them. And the last thing – story directions that make little sense like Jade winning a title on her own, forming a faction, and then losing her first defense after putting them together even though she has them to interfere instead of winning the first match then Rhea evening the odds and beating her. That reeked of just wanting to do the title change at Mania instead of telling a logical coherent story. But that’s a microcosm of how things have been going in this division for three years. We’ll see if things get any better, I guess. I never thought I’d say this, but there’s always AEW.