WWE SmackDown: Predicting What’s Next for the Women’s Division

The SmackDown women weren’t given much spotlight at the Royal Rumble, that will change for Elimination Chamber.

Following the year 2016, when the women of WWE soared to new heights, SmackDown needs to be the first brand to pick that trend back up in 2017. At the next PPV, Alexa Bliss should defend her SmackDown Women’s Championship inside the Elimination Chamber.

At the Royal Rumble, the SmackDown women were a little lost in the shuffle. It was a stacked card, so somebody had to take a backseat, but the creative team of SmackDown has to make sure that it doesn’t happen again at WrestleMania. In order to do that, they need to make a big splash. Right now, there’s no bigger splash that could be made than by taking the six women from the SmackDown Royal Rumble Kickoff Match, and putting them inside the Elimination Chamber.

It almost seems as if they’re setting up that way. It’s entirely possible that they just threw those six women together to get them all on the show, but it seems awfully coincidental that they would have a six person match two weeks before an Elimination Chamber PPV, but not put those people in the Chamber when the time came.

The story up to this point works too. Bliss is a heel champion who has used some tricks to maintain her title. What better way to give her her comeuppance than by making her defend against five women? There’s Bliss’ only challenger so far, Becky Lynch, who was cheated out of the title in her most recent title match. There’s Mickie James, who helped Bliss retain a few weeks ago, and could be forced to challenge her friend for the title as a way for the babyface Commissioner and GM to teach them a lesson. Naomi would get in the match after she was the one who pinned Bliss on the Royal Rumble Kickoff Show. Then there’s Natalya and Nikki Bella. The reasoning gets a little iffy when you get to them, but it could be worked out by giving Nikki a spot for being on the winning team with Naomi at the Royal Rumble, and having Natalya win a qualifying match over Carmella, with James Ellsworth accidentally getting in the way to advance their storyline.

For the most part, that gives all six women a good, legitimate reason to be in that match.

Then, that gives you plenty of options for what to do for WrestleMania, but two that seem most likely. One, Bliss could keep it, leading to another big six- or seven-woman match at The Show of Shows.

The other, gives the title to Natalya, allowing her feud with Nikki to truly come to a head in a one-on-one match at WrestleMania, while Becky and Naomi could team up against Bliss and James to give their feud more of a spotlight.

The tag match would definitely be on the Kickoff Show, the title match might be too, but at least that doesn’t just combine a bunch of storylines into one big mess of a match on an important show when talents should be rewarded for building compelling feuds.

Next: Potential WrestleMania Opponents for Randy Orton

Sunday night was a low point for the SmackDown women, but Tuesday could be the start of something big.