Hmmm.
Whether you immediately arrived at the somewhat-cynical-yet-historically-realistic conclusion Bayley’s first Women’s title run would span from her Feb. 13 victory over Charlotte Flair to Mar. 5’s Fastlane where the Queen of pay-per-view (PPV) would reclaim the belt or not, we all knew the Hugster’s story wasn’t over on a regular Raw. Love or hate the way WWE presents the women’s division on Monday nights, there was clearly more to come.
One idea, put forth by our own Jason Martin, would be for Flair to employ the same high-powered legal team which forced commissioner Stephanie McMahon to overturn a previous loss to Bayley and get her belt back well in advance of Fastlane.
The justification for that would be Sasha Banks’ interference. While The Boss initially came to ringside to even the odds after Charlotte’s long-lost sidekick Dana Brooke showed up, she did force the Queen to break her Figure Eight leglock by popping her right in the boob with a crutch, so...
WWE.com’s preview for the upcoming Raw (Feb. 20) plays up the Sasha-ference angle, and also points to a Twitter exchange between the current and former champs. That back-and-forth is interesting because in it, Bayles disavows her friend’s actions:
...and she did it all by herself! What a hero to all Huggers everywhere! #StillTheQueen https://t.co/zMgrwTguFv
— Charlotte Flair (@MsCharlotteWWE) February 15, 2017
.@MsCharlotteWWE Sasha has always had my back but I was focused on beating you myself.....Again. I had no idea she would do that.
— Bayley (@itsBayleyWWE) February 15, 2017
They’ve planted seeds for Charlotte to retroactively “screw” Bayley out of her big moment and also to justify a heel turn, or at least a more selfish Sasha, down the road. We’ll see how things play out. WWE might not follow up on either, or use both in a way that doesn’t work.
But they’ve got enough moving parts here that I’m gonna wait and see what happens before writing this off as more of the same.
You?