WWE Backlash 2018: Results, Highlights, Analysis, and Grades

Source: WWE.com

SmackDown Women’s Championship Match

Carmella (c) vs. Charlotte Flair

Result: Carmella defeated Charlotte Flair via pinfall

Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

As the guy who does the Raw review every week, I don’t get to write about Carmella a whole lot. In fact, this is her first singles match on a pay per view since, let me check my notes, the Carter administration. So I may not have had the chance to talk about the Princess of Staten Island since she was still on NXT, which is nuts.

And one thing I completely forgot about regarding Carmella: she’s by far the loudest superstar on either brand. Whether it’s her past as a cheerleader, or just a side effect of being from Staten Island, but girl’s got some pipes. It’s, honestly, kind of annoying: My wife was sitting on the couch next to me, reading a book and occasionally glancing at the TV, and she looked up during this match and said, “I don’t even like Charlotte, but I want her to kick the [expletive deleted] out of Carmella right now.”

The competition of woooooos and struts wasn’t unexpected, even if the match didn’t necessarily need it. In general, it was an okay match, but it seemed to follow the pattern of “predictable finish that we arrive at oddly.” I really thought the match was going to end with the Code of Silence (which I’m still upset isn’t called the Scissors or something related to hairdressing, but whatever). The move kind of came out of nowhere, and that would have legitimized Carmella as champion immediately.

Instead, the finish, while not bad, was just weird. Basically, Carmella won via fluke, so it does her no real favors even though technically it’s a clean victory. Throw in Charlotte being the one to beat Asuka, and her not winning any matches since then, and the whole Blue Team booking looks really strange.