Bayley made her long-anticipated debut to Monday Night RAW last week, finally answering the wishes of the WWE universe to get her deserved promotion to the main roster. In a memorable moment in Brooklyn, Bayley stepped up to the plate to challenge new Women’s Champion Charlotte to a match. With no Sasha Banks for possibly a few months, this was the absolutely the right time for Bayley to get promoted. A lot of arguments that can be made that Bayley should have been promoted sooner, but at least Bayley has been brought up at a time where there’s little competition for her as the top babyface on RAW. This was not like the Divas Revolution when Charlotte, Sasha and Becky Lynch were all brought up at the same time. She debuted and made the night all about her, making her the most viable opponent for Charlotte. With no Sasha and Paige due to certain circumstances, the WWE almost had to bring up Bayley due to the lack of legitimate challengers for the Women’s Championship.
However, the fact that she is debuting as part of a championship angle does ask a serious question. If she’s debuting to go up against Charlotte, should she win the title at the first RAW-exclusive pay-per-view Clash Of Champions? As you can probably tell by the title, you can pretty much work out what my argument is going to be for. Bayley absolutely cannot lose this hugely important title match against Charlotte. Here’s why the newcomer needs to win the Women’s Championship at Clash Of Champions.
The biggest reason why Bayley needs to win the championship is because of how much damage Charlotte has caused as the number one woman in the company. When she won the Women’s Championship at Night Of Champions, the only reason why the fans were down with it is because she was beating the very unpopular Nikki Bella. At that point, the WWE Universe’s tolerance of Nikki on top of the division had snapped. They demanded change with a “divas revolution” in WWE. Charlotte was simply the placeholder hero. She was not a placeholder champion, as the next ten months or so would prove, but she was the “anyone-but-Nikki” option. It didn’t matter who beat Nikki, as long as somebody did. I’m pretty sure that the WWE fans would have went nuts if even Naomi or Tamina had won the championship that night.
The point is that the fans weren’t invested enough in Charlotte as a character. The WWE made her into more of a tagline than a character. The fans simply saw her as Ric Flair’s daughter, with no interest into Charlotte’s journey towards beating Nikki for the championship. I don’t care who WWE would have put in there, without the proper storyline and investment, the fans would never seriously get behind a challenger like this. Look at the investment and interest in Sasha Banks’ journey to being Women’s Champion in July. This made the initial babyface title run of Charlotte’s such a failure as well. Paige even turned heel, turned on all of her friends, made insensitive remarks about Charlotte’s deceased brother… and was still cheered more than Charlotte for their championship match at Survivor Series.
Therefore, when Charlotte turned heel, only a small portion of the fans were really more invested into her character after she turned. The reason for this is simply because being a heel will automatically give you more options to work with. It doesn’t matter who you are, as being a villain can play to your strengths. Look at how Roman Reigns was suddenly more popular when was a no-talking and all action badass as part of the Shield. Look at how being heels brought out the best out of the New Day. Charlotte as a heel could at least give WWE an excuse to do angles with her as a means of “getting her heat” as opposed to getting cheered. Who really cares about what she does, as long as she gets booed? That’s the end-game.
I would never be one to encourage this, as Charlotte should be getting booed for what her character does rather than just being out there for terrible in-ring segments with Dana Brooke. That’s a big misconception that a lot of fans don’t get about Charlotte. Charlotte’s only getting a lot of boos at the moment because the fans are sick of her being out there having twenty minute talking segments with Sasha, Enzo Amore and Chris Jericho. The fans are sick of her being overly-pushed, much like Roman Reigns. In fact, she is primarily the female Roman Reigns in terms of her position in WWE. She’s there at the top and the fans don’t accept. It’s primarily mild boos, mild woos and not a lot of interest whenever she comes out.
That’s why I was thrilled when Sasha beat her for the championship on RAW. It was the start of a truly “new era” for women’s wrestling in WWE. The champion was someone that the fans actually cared about enough to chant for them when they even weren’t around. She was a likeable babyface, a great wrestler and a great talker. She was the total package. Then at SummerSlam, the RAW women’s division got hit with tragedy. Sasha was no longer the champion and Charlotte was a champion only a month after losing the title. To quote a famous rapper, I went from zero to one hundred real quick.
All of that work in promoting Sasha Banks and the amazing good-feel moment from RAW was all thrown by the wayside after Sasha was pinned clean by Charlotte. I know Sasha had a bad back and she had to take some time off, but you could have found some way to protect Sasha without beating her clean. However, they didn’t. They beat her clean in the middle. Charlotte beat her clean in the middle. Now Charlotte is once again the champion and thank god that Bayley is now on the main roster.
I would not want to say that anyone is better than Charlotte as champion, as Bayley’s a woman that is ready to take the RAW women’s division by storm. You have an excitable and very likeable babyface waiting in the wings. You have a very good worker waiting in the wings. You have a woman that was always ready to be a champion on the main roster and merely needs to beat Charlotte at Clash Of Champions in her first title match. That needs to happen, as opposed to Charlotte retaining the title.
Charlotte was very fortunate that Sasha got injured, allowing her to win the championship as she was merely in the right place at the right time. She was not a placeholder champion when she first won the Divas Championship but she needs to just be a placeholder champion right now. When you’ve given a woman a whole year (minus 28 days) to be a champion, there’s literally not much else there for her to do. You’ve exhausted Charlotte as the champion, which you already knew since Charlotte lost the championship a month ago. If you felt that way about her a month ago, why should you change your mind? What benefit is there for me to want to watch Charlotte as the champion again, when I could have a lot more enjoyment watching Bayley as champion.
After all, if Bayley’s going to spent four years in NXT without being promoted… she needs to seriously get rewarded for her struggle.
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