Let’s take a trip back to last November. Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch were set to clash in a Champion vs. Champion match at Survivor Series in the hottest feud going at the time, thanks to both women’s star-power and surging momentum.
However, we never got that match thanks to an errant Nia Jax punch injuring Lynch. Fast forward to January, where The Man won the Women’s Royal Rumble and chose Rousey to be her opponent at WrestleMania 35.
It was finally happening: the feud was back on and the match fans had been waiting for was going to become a reality. Most importantly, it was almost a lock to be the first women’s match to main event 2The Grandest Stage of Them All”.
But my oh my, how quickly things changed.
The next thing you know, Lynch is getting suspended long enough to miss WrestleMania. Then to add insult to injury, Charlotte Flair—the one woman no one wanted near this storyline—was chosen by Vince McMahon to face Rousey instead.
This is when things started to go downhill. The badass and rebellious Lynch was reduced to a broken and crippled competitor. Rousey became a bratty and entitled heel that was trying way too hard to get the fans to hate her. Flair had once again been inserted into a history-making moment for the women, no matter how much the fans didn’t want it to happen.
The long-awaited one-on-one match became a Triple Threat, and what was once a storyline that fans were fully invested in became one that had them wondering just what went wrong.
In my opinion, the answer is rather simple: WWE overcomplicated things when they didn’t need to.
The Lynch vs. Rousey feud was going to write itself; you had two of the hottest stars in the company battling over who was the best. Fans wanted it and were willing to tune in week after week to see Rousey try and hold onto the RAW Women’s Championship with Lynch hot on her tail.
But then for some reason, WWE felt like they had to prove to the fans how tough Lynch was. Her knee was getting reinjured almost weekly and the next week she came back ready for more. The problem was that it didn’t need to happen.
The fans already knew how tough she was and didn’t want her to become another clichéd underdog. They wanted her to be The Man they have adored and supported for the last few months.
Adding Flair into the mix started to cool off the storyline considerably. Don’t get me wrong, Flair is a talented performer and has every right to be in the position she is right now, but she didn’t need to be there. It was supposed to be Lynch’s time to shine, and The Queen’s inclusion just didn’t feel right from the start.
Then we move to Rousey, who has gone completely off the rails. This one falls squarely on creative’s shoulders; from the get-go, making her a smiling, happy-go-lucky good guy was never going to be believable. Her best work in WWE has been when she acted like the super serious and intense woman that made her a star in MMA.
However, this heel Rousey feels very forced. She’s doing everything she can to not only break kayfabe—which was already broken to begin with—but to also act as if she doesn’t care about anyone but herself and is above the company. This turn came way too late and the fans aren’t buying it one bit.
It doesn’t help that there have been a few storyline inconsistencies as well. How can someone like Dana Brooke get a title shot in literally a week while Lynch has been scratching and clawing to get there for months? All of this makes the match not as exciting as it used to be, and that’s a complete shame.
You know the old saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? I think it fits this whole storyline perfectly. WWE took one of the hottest matches on the WrestleMania card and have almost stopped its momentum dead in its tracks. If they are wondering why fans aren’t as interested as they once were, they need to take a good look in the mirror.
Maybe this will teach them an important lesson: some stories can tell themselves without any unnecessary meddling.