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Welcome to the WrestleMania stock report, our yearly series where we look back at all the players from last year’s WrestleMania card and see how they fared over the year. You can take a look at where people were at this time last year in last year’s final report here.
WrestleMania is the perfect time to see how the stock of a wrestler has moved over 365 days. It serves as a “season finale” to the year of WWE. This is where they pay off their big storylines and where they want to showcase their best. Where someone lands on the WrestleMania card says a lot about what their stock is currently. Given there are so many people vying for spots on the biggest show of the year, it’s a good look at how WWE views certain talent.
Today, we’re going to look at the women’s matches, which were two title bouts.
Bayley def. Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, & Nia Jax to retain the Raw Women’s championship
Nia Jax
Despite being in one of the two Women’s title matches at WrestleMania this year, Nia didn’t have many featured storylines most of the year.
She was often around, outside a little time off, but she never had a focused story. There was one time they teased her feuding with Alexa Bliss, but that didn’t become a solid feud at that time. And she was back to being her friend sooner than later.
Then there was the time Nia had a thing for Enzo Amore before he was released.
She recently took a couple L’s to Asuka prior to overhearing her friend Alexa Bliss say some terrible things about her. Now she’ll have a chance for revenge when she faces Bliss at WrestleMania.
Best Moment: Destroying folk in the Women’s Rumble
Worst Moment: Flirting with Enzo
Stock: Increased
Sasha Banks
The women’s division on Raw is all over the place and there wasn’t one long arc to follow for most of the women.
Sasha’s big run was her feud with Alexa Bliss. They had a great match at Great Balls of Fire that ended in a count out. She earned another shot to face Bliss at SummerSlam, though that was after Bayley, who was originally scheduled to face Bliss, went down with an injury. The Boss was victorious, winning the Women’s title once again.
However, she was still unable to successfully defend it and lost it to Alexa Bliss on their rematch. To this day, she’s never successfully defended the Raw Women’s title.
She had a strong showing at the Women’s Royal Rumble, starting the match and lasting all the way to the final four.
She’s currently feuding with Bayley, who’s had enough of Banks’ questionable actions. This blew up in a backstage fight recently and will follow both women into the Women’s WrestleMania battle royal this year.
Best Moment: Winning the Women’s championship
Worst Moment: Once again, failing to defend it successfully.
Stock: No change - She’s in a non-title women’s story on Raw, which is very rare. There was no room on the card so she’ll be in the battle royal. In that sense, you could argue a drop. But for my money, the fact she and Bayley still have a featured feud keeps her status pretty even.
Charlotte
Charlotte moved to SmackDown as their big acquisition in the Shake-Up. Her presence was so impactful that a group of women created a “Welcoming Committee” to take care of the Charlotte problem.
The Welcoming Committee was a thorn in the side of the Queen and prevented her from winning the title once.
She was unsuccessful on both Money in the Bank matches (thanks Ellsworth!)
Charlotte took some time off due to her father’s illness, which thankfully he recovered from. Afterwards, she entered a feud with then champion Natalya and eventually won the title. She’s held onto it since, fending off Ruby Riott in her latest defense. She will be defending the title against the undefeated Asuka this year.
Best Moment: Winning the SmackDown title, being the first woman to hold the NXT, Raw, Divas, and SmackDown title.
Worst Moment: Being laid out by the Riott Squad. (Honestly, not a lot of bad moments for the Queen this year).
Stock: Increased - Any of the women in a one on one match will see an increase while the rest went from title match to battle royal, so it’ll likely be somewhat of a decrease.
Bayley
Bayley carried the Women’s title out of WrestleMania but soon lost it to Alexa Bliss. Then she lost in a pretty pathetic fashion in a kendo stick match where she put up little fight, showing way too much apprehension about using the kendo stick. It almost felt like they were about to tell a story about her finding her inner fire or a character tweak, but alas, this is the Raw women’s division. Instead it never went anywhere and she ended up winning a match to face Bliss at SummerSlam.
Unfortunately, she got hurt and missed some time.
She returned and was able to participate in the first women’s Royal Rumble (being eliminated by Sasha) and Elimination Chamber (being screwed by Sasha). This turned into a feud between Bayley and the Boss about the state of their friendship and who can trust whom.
It’s actually the most direction she’s had in awhile and it’s a really good story. There’s just no room for it on WrestleMania, which is fine. It’s still early. So it’ll play out in the Women’s battle royal.
Best Moment: Finally standing up to that sinister Sasha Banks (Channeling my inner Graves here)
Worst Moment: That kendo stick match. She looked bad in that one.
Stock: Decreased - going from champion to not in a championship match is a drop. Hopefully her feud with Sasha will continue and help raise her profile back up this year.
Naomi def. Alexa Bliss, Becky Lynch, Carmella, Mickie James, & Natalya to win the women’s championship
Naomi
Naomi won the title in this match. It was looking like she was going to have a pretty lengthy reign. She even had a custom glow title. But then she lost it to Natalya within a couple months of debuting the custom title.
After losing the title, Naomi has kind of meandered (like much of the women in the SmackDown division).
She got to participate in the first ever women’s Money in the Bank and the first ever women’s Royal Rumble, where she was the one to perform the impressive athleticism spot. She’ll be in another first battle royal this Sunday at WrestleMania.
Best Moment: Her custom belt debut
Worst Moment: Losing the title soon after debuting it
Stock: Dropped
Alexa Bliss
Bliss lost her title in this match, but she had the best year out of all of the women in the match.
She moved to Raw and quickly won the red Women’s belt from Bayley and easily defended it. She lost it to Sasha Banks at SummerSlam, but quickly won it back since defending the title isn’t Sasha’ bag.
Bliss retained it in the women’s Elimination Chamber match.
Unfortunately for the Goddess, she said some pretty nasty things about Nia Jax which Nia overheard. Alexa will now have to pay for her sins at WrestleMania in a one on one bout against the Irresistible Force.
Best Moment: Defending her title against five women in the Elimination Chamber
Worst Moment: When Nia overheard all the nasty things Bliss said about her
Stock: Increased
Becky Lynch
Honestly, Becky Lynch didn’t have a banner year.
She didn’t have a bad year, but she didn’t have any single’s feuds.
She was part of the Welcoming Committee story, teaming with Charlotte. She was in the Money in the Bank match. She dealt with the Riott Squad alongside Charlotte and Naomi after they took her out of action. And she competed in the Royal Rumble. All of these were part of other people’s stories.
The only thing that comes close to a single’s feud was her story with James Ellsworth, where she won their intergender match.
Now she’s back in a multi-woman WrestleMania match.
Best Moment: Defeating James Ellsworth
Worst Moment: Getting taken out by the Riott Squad
Stock: No change - Honestly, she wasn’t doing too much this time last year and hasn’t been the featured player of any story the entire year.
Carmella
Carmella’s year was all about the Money in the Bank contract.
While she was part of the Welcoming Committee alongside Natalya and Tamina, her big moment was in the summer. In the first ever women’s Money in the Bank ladder match, she won the briefcase. Sure James Ellsworth grabbed it for her, but she was declared the victor.
She won it again when Daniel Bryan opted to redo the match because of the Ellsworth factor.
As will often happen with briefcase winners, she didn’t have much featured throughout the year. She kicked James Ellsworth to the curb but wasn’t featured in any major feuds.
She attempted to cash in the Money in the Bank multiple times on Charlotte but was unsuccessful. She still holds the case.
Ms. Money in the Bank will be in the women’s battle royal this year.
Best Moment: Winning the Money in the Bank contract... twice
Worst Moment: Botching her attempted cash ins... thrice
Stock: Mild increase - While she isn’t doing much, that briefcase will also slightly elevate the stock of the holder while they have it.
Mickie James
Mickie James moved to Raw, but the change of scenery didn’t help her much.
Her big point of note was a title feud against Alexa Bliss based on the champ taking shots at Mickie’s age. It was a solid, though short, feud which Bliss won.
James participated in the Women’s Royal Rumble and had a face to face moment with Trish Stratus which was fantastic.
For some reason, Mickie James started hanging out with Alexa Bliss again. This was in time to get beat up by Nia Jax.
Mickie will compete with all the other women who don’t have title matches in the first ever WrestleMania Women’s Battle Royal.
Best Moment: Her moment with Trish in the Royal Rumble.
Worst Moment: Deciding to be friends with Alexa Bliss again despite a long history of that being a terrible idea.
Stock: No change - While going from a title match to a multi-woman match is in a sense a downgrade, she wasn’t really doing much more before that multi-women WrestleMania match than she is prior to this multi-women WrestleMania match.
Natalya
Natalya was part of the Welcoming Committee when Charlotte arrived to SmackDown, but her big moment was when she defeated Naomi to win the Women’s title at SummerSlam.
She had a feud with Charlotte that spanned a couple months where she lost the belt to her.
Since then, she’s been around as part of tag matches, but hasn’t had any spotlighted story.
Best Moment: Winning the Women’s title
Worst Moment: Losing it to Charlotte
Overall: Unchanged - While she had a good summer with winning the title, she’s pretty much back to where she was last year.
OK, let’s break this down. I should note that I didn’t include Maryse in here because she was just in that one match last year and is out on maternity leave.
We looked at a total of ten women.
Four of them have an increased stock. Only the three women in the title matches this year and Carmella.
Four had unchanged stock. In most cases, that wasn’t a good thing (Becky, Natalya, Mickie). Sasha I consider that a victory because the Raw women’s title match was booked as more important than the SmackDown one.
The only two decreases were the women who walked out with the titles. Naomi hasn’t done much since losing her title. Bayley has a story, so it’s less of a drop.
If I’m to take anything from this, it’s that WWE does a poor job telling non-title stories with women. They’re finally doing that with Bayley and Sasha now and that’s good. But the fact that all the women not in title feuds have decreased stocks or unchanged stocks is telling.
We’ll be back tomorrow with the final installment: The main events!
Catch up with the series so far: