WWE SmackDown Winners and Losers: A Stacked Tag Division

Loser: The Women’s Division

If Carmella holds the Women’s Title for an extended period of time, the women’s division will suffer. Her promo tonight was far too long. She really needs to find some originality with her character to make her shine through. Carmella, though she has a great look and good athleticism, cannot hold a candle to the likes of Charlotte, Becky Lynch, or Asuka. SmackDown’s divisional counterpart on Raw has a significant amount of talent in the women’s division with a variety of viable options to carry the title at any time. SmackDown has options but it will not be easy to get the title off of Carmella. Furthermore, it will be hard to sell Carmella as a credible champion when the roster has the likes of Charlotte and Asuka.

Women’s wrestling has changed. The level of athleticism and competition has become a strong point of many Raws, SmackDowns, and PPVs. The more skilled women wrestlers on SmackDown are going to suffer the same fate as those who wrestled Jinder Mahal during his title reign last year if Carmella defeats the best in the division.

However, the strongest reason that the women’s division was a loser on Smackdown boils down to the IIconics. Outside of Peyton Royce’s funny impression of Charlotte, Peyton and Billie Kay do not bring much to the table as wrestlers. Their work Tuesday night was reminiscent of WWE Divas from ten years ago, and not in a good way.

Their characters are a rehashing of LayCool without the charisma or skill. Furthermore, they have been placed in a position of prominence without doing much besides hurling insults at their competition. After watching Billie wrestle Charlotte, it is evident that the limitations of these two need to be hidden in order for their personalities to cover their shortcomings in the ring. Carmella, Peyton, and Billie may be good heel characters, but they should not be the focus of the women’s division.