ROH: Madison Rayne Defeats Britt Baker To Qualify For Final Battle Title Match

At ROH Final Battle 2018, Sumie Sakai will defend the Women of Honor Championship against three other women in a “Four Corner Survival” match, and Madison Rayne has already qualified to become one of her opponents for the highly-anticipated match.

Madison Rayne officially signed a one-year deal with ROH in mid-September after working the Mae Young Classic 2 for WWE and featuring in a Knockouts Championship match at Impact Wrestling’s highly-praised Slammiversary Pay Per View this summer. On the same weekend as Slammiversary, Rayne lost a Women of Honor World Championship match against Sumie Sakai at a TV taping, and that loss may foreshadow what’s to come.

ROH announced that Sakai will defend the WOH Title at Final Battle 2018 in a Four Corners Survival Match, which has featured the Women of Honor division once before. This time, though, it’ll all be on the line at big Pay Per View on Dec. 14 in the Hammerstein Ballroom, and this could be the end of Sakai’s 200-day, inaugural reign.

On Nov. 4 at Survival of the Fittest in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio, Rayne became the first woman to qualify for the Four Corners Survival Match at Final Battle, defeating Britt Baker in singles competition. Baker and Rayne are familiar opponents, as they competed in the All In Fatal Four-Way match, which was won by Tessa Blanchard. (Chelsea Green was the fourth woman who competed in that match.)

Rayne is expected to be a centerpiece player in the Women of Honor division, and she is the biggest name in the division with Tenille Dashwood fighting psoriasis and recovering from shoulder surgery. At this point, Rayne looks like the favorite to win the title off of Sakai, assuming the champion fails to retain (and that may be a risky assumption, given Sakai’s record thus far), but it will be interesting to see who the two other women in the match are.

It was no surprise to see Rayne defeat Baker, who has been shining for ROH lately, working several big shows for the company. ROH is taking its Women of Honor division more seriously, and the Four Corners Survival title match at Final Battle is another step forward.

After the match, Rayne and Baker were attacked by Holidead and Thunder Rosa, and it will be exciting to see how that story plays into The Queen Bee’s quest for the WOH World Championship. Perhaps Rosa and Holidead will make her life miserable at Final Battle, and it’s not out of the question for one of them to qualify for the title match. Exciting times indeed.