Ever since the WWE Draft, the status of the company’s two women’s championships has been a bit of a running joke. It started when Rhea Ripley, the SmackDown Women’s Champion, was drafted to Raw, while the then-Raw Women’s Champion Bianca Belair went the other way to SmackDown.
As silly as it is for the championships to be named for the shows they appear on, at least it made sense before. After the champs switched brands, WWE just continued on like it was no big deal, which was dumb.
Nothing changed when Asuka defeated Belair at Night of Champions, as the titles remained on the “wrong” shows. However, the Empress of Tomorrow sounds like she might be at the center of a fix for the whole situation.
WWE has added a bit to its preview for tonight’s SmackDown from Des Moines, saying Asuka will have “a WWE Women’s Championship Presentation.” Fightful Select (subscription required) says its sources have said that the language used “wasn’t an accident,” suggesting that the Raw and SmackDown titles as we know them will be no more.
The guess here is that if Asuka is getting the WWE Women’s Championship, perhaps Ripley will receive a Women’s Universal Championship or something similar. That would untether the titles from their respective shows while keeping them roughly equivalent and able to be defended exclusively on one brand without needing to jump through logistical hoops next time there’s a draft.
When a nearly identical situation popped up two years ago, WWE had the two women’s champs at the time, Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair, simply exchange titles. That didn’t go over well with fans — nor, reportedly, with the wrestlers themselves.
Changing the names of the championships is a much better and more creatively satisfying solution, but one wonders why WWE wouldn’t have done it several weeks ago to prevent the ridiculousness in the first place.