Becky Lynch’s WWE Booking isn’t Making Her Look Weak

Becky Lynch is one of the best babyfaces in the WWE today, but there’s concern among some fans that she could look weak by taking too many pins.

On the latest episode of SmackDown Live, Becky Lynch was thrust into a random tag-team match with Natalya as her partner, as the “Lass Kicker” and the “Queen of Hearts” were tasked with defeating the tandem of Alexa Bliss and Mickie James. As expected, Natalya turned on Becky during the match with a release German suplex.

What was more surprising, however, was the length of time that transpired before Becky was pinned for the 1-2-3. James stood in the corner, poised to deliver an additional move, before Bliss made the tag and pinned Becky herself. Being pinned by the SmackDown Women’s Champion is not a fate that is foreign to Lynch, but it took a great deal of time in between the suplex and the pin itself. Beyond that, it’s not like Natalya uses a release German as a way of winning a match, so it didn’t exactly seem wise for SmackDown to have its top babyface lose in this manner.

Before this bizarre finish, there was concern among fans that Lynch hasn’t been booked strongly enough. She’s been fooled time after time by Bliss’s cheap antics, including when “Five Feet of Fury” cheated to capture her second title reign. There’s a worry that not only does Becky look foolish by being turned against so often or being prone to cheating, but there’s also a worry that she’s been taking too many pins.

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It’s important to understand that SmackDown won’t simply give up on Becky as their top babyface, even if Asuka could be called up from the NXT roster and James seems like a great pick to win the title at WrestleMania. Even in that tag team match in which Becky took the pin, she was able to get her “stuff” into great effect. Whenever she steps inside the ring, even against someone as acclaimed for their wrestling ability as Mickie, she manages to look like the best competitor out there. In that match, she had been dominating both Bliss and James with clotheslines, strikes, and an enziguiri before Natalya took matters into her own hands.

Additionally, SmackDown seems to realize that booking Lynch into too many losses that are the result of nefarious tactics could be too damaging to her character. She needs to take several cheap losses in order to boost the heels on the roster, particularly Bliss who isn’t believably superior to Becky in the ring, and being portrayed as a trusting babyface is a part of her character.

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That said, Becky wasn’t fooled by Bliss’s antics in her two-out-of-three falls match with Mickie James in the February, 28th, edition of SmackDown Live. In fact, she came up with an extremely clever way to get back at Bliss, who distracted the ref when Becky had James pinned. Lynch simply moved out of the way when she sensed James charging after her, and this caused both Bliss and James to collide. After trading leverage pins with James, Lynch took advantage by winning the match via the Dis-arm-her.

A completely clean loss is a rarity for Lynch, but no matter how many losses she takes or the circumstances behind her, she will never suffer a loss of credibility as a competitor. The fact is, an audience will take any wrestler seriously as a championship threat if they are booked accordingly, regardless of some of their past defeats. Becky’s place has been set for quite some time, particularly because she was the inaugural SmackDown Women’s Champion. Her work in the ring speaks for itself, she gets plenty of dangerous offense in all of her matches, and her perseverant-but-fiery babyface character clearly clicks with a large portion of fans.

Bray Wyatt is a great example of how multiple high-profile losses don’t hurt a character. In the past, some fans found it difficult to take Wyatt seriously as a potential main event player, because he never seemed to win big PPV matches. When he captured the WWE Championship at the Elimination Chamber by pinning both John Cena and A.J. Styles clean, absolutely nobody batted an eye.

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The notion that Becky Lynch will ever look weak is an unfounded one, and the WWE has done plenty to ensure that whenever Becky is fooled or suffers a loss, she responds differently. On a show that embraces complex, subtle storytelling like SmackDown this isn’t easy to spot, but it’s present, as evidenced by the circumstances behind her win over James. Furthermore, the WWE understands how quickly fans forget losses and how to build babyfaces properly. Bliss beat Lynch to a second title reign for a reason, and that was to advance her storyline with James, who recently turned face. Lynch will get another big moment soon, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if that came at WrestleMania.