WWE SummerSlam 2017: Alexa Bliss vs. Sasha Banks full match preview

Alexa Bliss (c) vs. Sasha Banks

Raw Women’s title match

Let’s be honest. The booking of the Raw women’s division has been baffling for a while now. Just look at their road to SummerSlam.

Their last women’s title program was Sasha Banks vs. Alexa Bliss. They started to hint at some real life issues between the women but didn’t get into it much. The match at Great Balls of Fire ended with Alexa taking a count out to retain her championship and Sasha Banks beating Bliss up all over the arena because of it. It was clearly the set up for a rematch at SummerSlam, where they could play up their real life heat and build a hot feud, right?

Wrong.

Instead, they booked match between Sasha and Bayley to crown the number one contender where Bayley picked up a clean win over the Boss to earn the right to face Alexa at SummerSlam.

What made this decision more maddening was that coming into this match, Bayley had been on somewhat of a losing streak. She had lost the title to Alexa and didn’t have what it took to beat her in a hardcore match. After an odd interview to Corey Graves and the start of losing streak, it looks like there was a story being told about Bayley finding herself in some sense to turn things around. However, coming into this #1 contenders match, she hadn’t shown any growth to earn her redemption. And of course it left Sasha out in the cold after the start of what could have been a hot angle at Balls.

Unfortunately, a week later, Bayley hurt her shoulder in a match against Nia Jax, which will keep her off the SummerSlam card. Obviously that’s not bad booking but bad luck for the Hugster.

To crown a new #1 contender, Kurt Angle booked two triple threat matches and the winner of those would face each other for the right to battle Bliss for the title.

Nia Jax won her match while Sasha won the other. The matched up last week and the Boss came out on top as Bliss watched on in her throne/lifeguard chair.

So now we’re actually getting Bliss/Banks, but only because it was their Plan B. So the match doesn’t get the benefit of any build. It was a contingency plan. Clearly it looked like they weren’t going to go anywhere with the hot post match angle with Bliss/Banks at Balls nor were going to really doing any character building for Bayley after her series of losses.

In the end, we got the match that made sense to begin with, but of course I’d rather see the match that made less sense if it meant a healthy Bayley. But I’d also rather a women’s division that made more sense.

Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss will continue their personal rivalry tonight at SummerSlam, which airs on the WWE Network at 7 EST. And keep it here at CagesideSeats.com for all of your SummerSlam coverage.