FanPost

Change is Necessary If Rousey Goes to Raw

There is a significant chance that Ronda Rousey will sign a contract with Monday Night Raw next Sunday at the Elimination Chamber PPV. There is also the possibility of a swerve but, in the event that she does sign with the red brand, there needs to be some wholesale change in the way in which the women’s division is presented. Ronda Rousey is a huge acquisition and she shouldn’t be wasted on people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Whoever is in charge of creative for the Raw women’s division has proven they don’t have any idea how to write for the women. Their track record over the last 19 months is abysmal. In just the last year alone it would’ve had to improve just to get to bad. It didn’t start off that way. The Charlotte Flair/ Sasha Banks feud looked promising. They were building Nia Jax as a monster. By October 2016 however things started going off the tracks. The title was being ping-ponged back and forth between Sasha and Charlotte. They were booked into a hell in a cell match for the sake of making history. Ultimately, while she had good matches with Charlotte, Sasha came out looking like a chump after losing an iron man match in December 2016. That’s when a problem that had been centralized in one feud metastasized to the entire division. First Nia Jax, the monster that had been squashing enhancement talent was booked into a feud, her first significant feud, with Sasha of all people. This meant that Jax had no chance to win this feud because Sasha could ill afford to lose another big feud after Charlotte. Speaking of Charlotte, she engaged in her next feud with Bayley. That one started off halfway decent. Bayley lost her first title shot against Charlotte at the Royal Rumble clean. Until October that was the last smart decision that was made where the women’s division was concerned. Things started cratering and cratering fast. Bayley, the uber-babyface, defeated Charlotte for the women’s title not on PPV but on free TV with the help of Sasha Banks. To be fair Banks was evening the odds however striking Charlotte wasn’t necessary. The very next week, February 20, 2017, Bayley’s character was brutally murdered live on television when she was subjected to a verbal dressing down by Stephanie McMahon that remained uninterrupted for twelve long minutes before Sasha finally came out. It only got worse from there. There was a fatal-four way elimination match at WrestleMania, the buildup to which featured somebody telling Nia Jax to go out on Raw and admit that was not involved in the story of the match. If Bayley’s character had been murdered in February what was left of it was drug into the ring in April and given to Alexa Bliss who defeated the babyface champion clean in the middle in the ring. Because that wasn’t bad enough the very next month she was put in an awful kendo stick-on-a-pole match in which she refused to use the kendo stick that was a part of the match (and had been used on her multiple times in the preceding weeks) and was summarily beaten with said stick and once again defeated by Bliss. What transpired next however was the low point of the year. From the June 5 Raw until the June 26 Raw the women were just having random tag team and six-woman matches. There was no actual story. It’s as if somebody just decided to take a summer vacation and not write anything for the women. It’s absolutely inexcusable. Alexa Bliss didn’t have a challenger until six days before the Great Balls of Fire PPV. The match between her and Sasha ended in a count-out but rather than doing the obvious and continuing the feud, Bayley won a number one contender’s match the next night. Ironically, Sasha wound up challenging Alexa at Summerslam anyway because Bayley got injured. Because killing Bayley’s character wasn’t enough they had to kill Sasha’s too when she defeated Bliss for the title and then promptly lost it right back to her a week later on Raw. Bliss herself wasn't immune to the inept writing either. She had barely survived being forced to carry a ridiculous "This is Your Life" segment during her feud with Bayley and wasn't allowed to pick up a mic for several weeks thereafter despite the fact that she is the best female promo on Raw. There was Nia Jax turning on Alexa Bliss, which flopped and was immediately scrapped. In the one bright spot all year a coherent feud was executed between Alexa Bliss and Mickie James in October. That same month Emma was inexplicably released even though she had suffered through the whole Emmalina debacle and somehow managed to maintain semi-relevance afterwards. Asuka was fortunate she debuted when she did because creative didn’t have the opportunity to screw her up.

Smackdown has by no means been perfect. It’s had its own issues, see The Welcoming Committee. Frankly though a bad or poorly executed idea is better than no idea at all. They had also built up some goodwill between the brand split and the Shake-up so a blunder or two was acceptable. Smackdown makes an effort to be inclusive and promote all their female talent. Raw barely makes an effort at all. Everyone who writes for the Raw women needs to be either reassigned or dismissed and replaced by people who are competent and who can write multiple good women’s stories or Ronda Rousey is just going to be another name on the list of people ruined by the Raw women’s division.




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